Suggestions of a Byzantine mindset

[Nick B II]

No, see, according to Nick B II, that would require "special programming time," a non-renewable resource. We need to reserve that for... I don't know what exactly, since apparently literally everything requires special programming time.

Any change to the game design requires programming that's not in the plan. That means a cool idea to make culture work better can only be implemented if Paradox a) increases the budget, or b) axes something else.

Since almost everything we talk about is a cool new feature somebody's just thought of...

Nick

 

[Nick B II]

Please tell me how culture and ethnicity didn't matter in medieval times?

Your example was a) fictional b) your argument showed that ethnicity wouldn't matter in that particular scenario but it didn't prove it didn't matter at all, what your example is really saying is people would rebel against a king who governed badly from far away, that is common sense. Your argument isn't valid. Of coure ethnicity is irrelevant here but that dosn't prove it didn't matter at all. Do you see what I mean?

Please cite a couple of historical examples (with a link if possible) from between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and 1350ish, that show how culture and ethnicity were irrelevant to medieval politics and people.

The Croats offered the Kings of Hungary their throne in 1102, and they retained it until 1918. From 1301 the Hungarian throne (and thus the Croatian one) throne was always occupied by a non-Hungarian with the exception of one guy in the 1440s.

The Normans managed to rule in countries as diverse as southern Italy, England, France, and Ireland despite the fact that none of their subjects were ethnic Normans.

Bohemia is another example of a country frequently ruled by foreigners.

It's pretty clear that some things that would be virtually unthinkable today (ie: an ethnic French King of Hungary) were not uncommon back then, therefore any special gameplay mechanic that penalizes ethnic French Kings of Hungary is anachronistic.

Also why do you think that it dosn't need representing in the game, do you not think even if it didn't impact politics directly it did have an effect, in my humble opinion that is quite narrow minded.

Re-read my posts. I've been pretty careful to say "almost" when I'm talking about this.

Mostly I'm talking about province-culture. In terms of CK1 gameplay it was pure flavor, which is appropriate for the time period.

But then an EU3 vet shows up, thinks "non-state-cultures must be penalized," not realizing that in CK you don't have a state to have a culture. There's a guy everybody swears loyalty to. If he's good at it nobody's gonna care he has a really strong accent. If he's bad at it nobody's gonna care that his family speaks the same language they do.

Thus, rather then individually explain this to everyone, you're almost better off scrapping province-cultures completely.

Nick

 

[Nuril]

BTW, what possible culture-specific event are you thinking of? Melting pots? There weren't any others in CK1, probably because cultures change so much IRL. An event that makes perfect sense for the Bretons in 1066 is just not likely to make sense for then in 1453.

Nick

Not really, I wasn't thinking specifically, but it's definitely a useful bit of code for things like Names/Events and so forth. If something is inappropriate for early/late timeperiods then the solution is INCREDIBLY simple: Either put a date on when an event can fire or put restrictions on it that likely wouldn't be met untill the appropriate time. *Also doesn't understand willingness to intentially hamstring Modders even if there are 0 culture-tied events (Which is pretty unlikely, imo)*

Any change to the game design requires programming that's not in the plan. That means a cool idea to make culture work better can only be implemented if Paradox a) increases the budget, or b) axes something else.

Since almost everything we talk about is a cool new feature somebody's just thought of...

Nick

Wut. "If we wanted to add new things to the Culture system it'd mean more work. SO WE MIGHT* AS WELL DELETE WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE"? Why would we need to make anything different from the actual mechanic? It's just how things react to the already existing thing. People not caring a lot = smaller penalties for differing cultures, with more emphasis on personal Ability and Gravitas - Which should be in the game no matter if there's a culture-system or not (Although to some cultures it was quite important. In Byzantium the opposition of not-quite-Greek rulers was often shouted as "Give us a Roman(=Greek) Emperor!").

*Note the careful use of the word "MIGHT". It's the sentiment that's questioned, not begrudgingly agreeing to have it in there for the sake of Naming conventions.

 

[constantinople!]

By the way, it was very easy for me to lose track of time in fullscreen mode of CQ1. I sat for a session planning to finish at midnight, but the next time I looked at my watch it was 02:00 AM!! If it was possible to include an option to display a real time clock in the game's menu bar, I'd be much obliged.

[I've re-edited my first post to add the items from later posts, so they can be all seen in one place. There are now 37 proposed items there!!!]

 

[Nick B II]

Not really, I wasn't thinking specifically, but it's definitely a useful bit of code for things like Names/Events and so forth. If something is inappropriate for early/late timeperiods then the solution is INCREDIBLY simple: Either put a date on when an event can fire or put restrictions on it that likely wouldn't be met untill the appropriate time. *Also doesn't understand willingness to intentially hamstring Modders even if there are 0 culture-tied events (Which is pretty unlikely, imo)*

Do you have any actual events to propose?

CK1 had plenty of modders, and the only culture-specific events that ever appeared were the melting pot ones.

That's kinda my problem with culture tags for provinces in CK1. People have all kinds of ideas, but they're a) ridiculously anachronistic or b) so un-specific you can't judge whether they make sense. As it stands you're basically saying we should keep province-cultures so that the LotR mod is easier to make.

Aside from RP, it just doesn't seem to do anything.

Wut. "If we wanted to add new things to the Culture system it'd mean more work. SO WE MIGHT* AS WELL DELETE WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE"? Why would we need to make anything different from the actual mechanic? It's just how things react to the already existing thing. People not caring a lot = smaller penalties for differing cultures, with more emphasis on personal Ability and Gravitas - Which should be in the game no matter if there's a culture-system or not (Although to some cultures it was quite important. In Byzantium the opposition of not-quite-Greek rulers was often shouted as "Give us a Roman(=Greek) Emperor!").

Nobody in this thread is talking about a new culture system. This is a new culture system:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?503742-Culture-Problem-and-Solution
Adding anachronistic penalties to Norwegian rulers of Sweden is not a new system. BTW, if you actually read that entire thread I linked to you'll note that I agreed with the changes proposed. I ended up coming to the conclusion that unless I wanted to send Paradox $150,000 or so of my personal money, so they could hire somebody to do the job, I had no right to bitch about their decision to keep the CK1 system.

Nick

 

[Nuril]

Do you have any actual events to propose?

First off, that's obviously fishing for an excuse. If I'm not imaginative enough, then clearly the possibility for all modders forever should just be deleted. But fine. One could make events regarding the interactions between Arabs/Berber/Greeks/Normans/Lombards and their tensions in southern Italy & Sicily as well as the Greek hold-outs on behalf of the Byzantine Empire that were bitterly opposed to the Normans. On the Arab/Berber/Greek Sicily things were boiling over into a full-blown Racial war by the time Roger de Hauteville took over (not a religious war either, the strongest hatred was Arab Vs Berber). The internal conflict was very helpful to the Normans, especially since Roger eventually ruled with tolerance and peace ("Bosso" and what-not).

I also already gave a small example: Dissatisfaction with non-Greek emperors by the Greek-cultured Roman Empire. It wouldn't need to be a steep penalty (unless thoroughly incompetent), but far too often I've seen Russians sitting on the throne of Constantinople without any problems (other than the obvious one of being too spread out so Anatolia pretty much always falls). It should spawn Greek pretenders, especially now that we have the Plotting system. They should gather support against the non-Hellenized monarch and overthrow him. It would never be tolerated in reality. God knows the Byzantines were trigger happy enough with perfectly legitimate rulers.

CK1 had plenty of modders, and the only culture-specific events that ever appeared were the melting pot ones.

I'm not even sure what "Melting pot events" mean. You mean in the sense of Cosmopolitaine cultures forming? I don't see how they'd make that happen unless they made many different mix-cultures or one homogenous one that all shift to. Seems weird.

As it stands you're basically saying we should keep province-cultures so that the LotR mod is easier to make.

Aside from RP, it just doesn't seem to do anything.

First of all: RP on it's own is a perfectly legitimate explanation for every single function that doesn't do a lot. Making the game more shallow and bareboned just because the mechanics don't need things is not a valid excuse. And yes, all of that needed those enhancers.

Secondly: No I'm not, but even so: WHY IS THAT A BAD THING? Why do you hate RPers, modders and appropriate naming?

Adding anachronistic penalties to Norwegian rulers of Sweden is not a new system. BTW, if you actually read that entire thread I linked to you'll note that I agreed with the changes proposed. I ended up coming to the conclusion that unless I wanted to send Paradox $150,000 or so of my personal money, so they could hire somebody to do the job, I had no right to bitch about their decision to keep the CK1 system.

No need to fabricate claims. I never said there should be static penalties (at least not unreasonable ones that become problematic) when there isn't a historical basis for it in much of Europe and for the Cultures where it isn't acceptable it'd be easy to have a modifier just for those cultures (which you'd also need separate cultures for). I outright agreed with that. But alright, I don't see how the thread you linked has anything to do with scrapping Culture as a concept, though. I repeat: "We might as well delete what we already have".

Putting it in as "Swedish" and "Norwegian" culture is somewhat misleading as well, since it brings up the divided image we have today. If anything it should be easier to rule among other Scandinavians than for outside Cultures (so hurray for Culture Groups, although we're certainly closer than Greeks and.. uh.. Georgians?). Unless it's that oppressive bastard Óláfr II of Norway.

EDIT: After having more of a look at that thread he's also just wrong, since Paradox never uses "Culture" to equal "Language", even if one of the easier ways to identify cultures is by different languages (people do tend to have similar traditions to the ones they speak with, after all). We also already have things like the ruling culture spreading to the subjects, with Culture Spread. Sure it could be neat for Cultures to diverge and develop into new ones, but I don't much see a justification to implement something mainly for anachronistic sandboxing, no.

 

[Nick B II]

Dude,

Your entire post was a long-ass exersize in putting words in my mouth.

Take this:

First of all: RP on it's own is a perfectly legitimate explanation for every single function that doesn't do a lot. Making the game more shallow and bareboned just because the mechanics don't need things is not a valid excuse. And yes, all of that needed those enhancers.

Secondly: No I'm not, but even so: WHY IS THAT A BAD THING? Why do you hate RPers, modders and appropriate naming?

The answer is simple:
You just made all that shit up.

I have not once, in this thread, and probably all other threads (after nearly 3,000 posts it’s hard to remember) that culture should actually go away. In other words you’re simply not responding to my points.

What I’ve said is that it should be politically irrelevant in CK.

You wanna have a debate about that go right ahead. I don’t think you will, because, as far as I can tell, the only daylight between us is that you want there to be culture specific events of some sort.

As for the other thread:
I linked to it partly in the hope that you’d read it and realize that you aren’t debating me. I don’t currently, and have never, support deleting culture from the game. I thought this could be easily shown by linking to a thread where I advocate for a slightly different form of culture to be present in the game. But apparently this was not the case.

Nick

 

[Nuril]

First of all: I challenge you to find anywhere where I put words in your mouth other than the misunderstanding that you didn't mean what you previously said as 'literally' as I took it (see below). Everything else is just discussion, questions and stating opinions I hold (and let's face it, you were being pretty snide with the whole "you're basically saying we should keep province-cultures so that the LotR mod is easier to make"-thing. I'm not even a LotR fan! ). My "fabricate claims" bit was apparently just a missed CK reference, I was just addressing how you seem to address some fictional "EU3er" quite often instead of the points being argued over. Maybe I missed something, but I certainly didn't see anyone talking about hard fixed penalties for everyone not of a province's culture. What I do see is you going "It didn't matter at all!" and others going "Uh, of course it mattered" then you going "How can you EU3ers say that there should be fixed penalties just like in EU3!".


"In the Middle Ages nobody gave a damn what nationality a lord was. I'm getting to the point that I wish Paradox would scrap culture completely because modern people just don't get how irrelevant it was to Medieval politics."
Reason: Irrelevancy.

"Thus, rather then individually explain this to everyone, you're almost better off scrapping province-cultures completely."
Reason: "Can't be arsed".

"As it stands you're basically saying we should keep province-cultures so that the LotR mod is easier to make."
Reason: *Strawman + Modders are douchebags not worthy of the precious time*

Dude,

Your entire post was a long-ass exersize in putting words in my mouth.

Take this:The answer is simple:
You just made all that shit up.
I have not once, in this thread, and probably all other threads (after nearly 3,000 posts it’s hard to remember) that culture should actually go away. In other words you’re simply not responding to my points.

..You said it plenty of times, you just added a qualifier in front of it every time. But the qualifier didn't actually make a real qualifier since it didn't have a point in being there. If you say that if it wasn't for naming we should get rid of it (what with the "only reason to keep it around") then the logical conclusion is that you don't consider these other points valid/important enough. But fine, if you're saying that all those qualifiers meant you didn't actually think that, then let's go with that. Not interested in arguing with thin air, it was just confusing in that case.

Edit: But, if your point isn't that culture is useless or that we should get rid of it or that we should expand on what it contains in the game.. what exactly is your point, just to be clear? I suppose it could be something to do with not wanting province cultures and just having it derive from the lineage? That is still objectionable for me since it removes a big asset in writing events, is detrimental to Roleplaying and certain historical events (such as the shifts happening in England and many others). I'm also not sure what courtier cultures would be based on. Just the culture of their liege? So we'd have only Hungarians in the Croatian court with all pretenders being Hungarians etc?

(The 'Roleplaying' bit here is referring to how I, as an Atheist, can still get into playing the role of a zealous promoter of "THE Faith", whichever it might be, and try to expand it even with little to no benefit in the games. Also in EU3 if I'm playing Byzantium then I often make a habit of trying to 'Hellenize' territories, forcing Alexandria, Antioch, southern Italy etc into "Greek" culture with Settlement Policies. I don't do it for some potential tax revenue, I do it for the Empire! Just as how many Byzantine Emperors don't shift from Imperial Government, despite inferior stats, simply to keep their title)

What I’ve said is that it should be politically irrelevant in CK.

Which I do disagree with, for several reasons - some of which I listed in my previous post and other ones in preceding posts.

You wanna have a debate about that go right ahead. I don’t think you will, because, as far as I can tell, the only daylight between us is that you want there to be culture specific events of some sort.

Sure. I think the historical events I brought up are relevant. So I refer back to my previous post.

As for the other thread:
I linked to it partly in the hope that you’d read it and realize that you aren’t debating me. I don’t currently, and have never, support deleting culture from the game. I thought this could be easily shown by linking to a thread where I advocate for a slightly different form of culture to be present in the game. But apparently this was not the case.

Oh. I saw a huge block of text as the opening and thought it was linked to your "New system for Culture", as that was what the topic was about and what you said right before the link and the latter bit being "I'd love to have a great culture system - If I had a fortune to send Paradox to fund it!" basically reiterating what Calanctus brought up earlier about how 'precious' the commodity of "programmer time" is. I like blunt language, so feel free to tell me outright what you wish for me to do / comprehend about your position, instead of leaving it to be interpreted (C'mon, it's a 10 page topic and you hadn't posted on the first pages -> "If you read the whole thing"). But alrighty then. The "about their decision to keep the CK1 system", as begrudging as it sounds, is nice.


I'm mostly saddened that no one replied to my linguistics question regarding the historical balance between Frankish German and Gallic Latin in the French language, though!

 

[Nick B II]

..You said it plenty of times, you just added a qualifier in front of it every time. But the qualifier didn't actually make a real qualifier since it didn't have a point in being there. If you say that if it wasn't for naming we should get rid of it (what with the "only reason to keep it around") then the logical conclusion is that you don't consider these other points valid/important enough. But fine, if you're saying that all those qualifiers meant you didn't actually think that, then let's go with that. Not interested in arguing with thin air, it was just confusing in that case.

I’m saying all those qualifiers meant I was really really annoyed at having to this debate, and that if Paradox scrapped culture completely one happy outcome would be never having it again.

Edit: But, if your point isn't that culture is useless or that we should get rid of it or that we should expand on what it contains in the game.. what exactly is your point, just to be clear?

My participation in this little debate was prompted by this quote from constantinople!:
(diff/nationality but same religion and same nationality but diff/religion should give mild problems, but large areas of diff-nationality and diff-religion should require effort to keep in check).

I agreed with him on religion. But nationality? Just not appropriate in CK.

Since then my point has been that any gameplay element linking stability/vassal loyalty/random rebel armies/etc. to culture would be inappropriate to the period.

I suppose it could be something to do with not wanting province cultures and just having it derive from the lineage? That is still objectionable for me since it removes a big asset in writing events, is detrimental to Roleplaying and certain historical events (such as the shifts happening in England and many others). I'm also not sure what courtier cultures would be based on. Just the culture of their liege? So we'd have only Hungarians in the Croatian court with all pretenders being Hungarians etc?

As a thought exercise, because I don’t actually support getting rid of province-culture:
This isn’t a huge problem. Randomly generated courtiers will be much less prominent in CK2 because much of your Court will be Barons with their own families and histories. When you do randomly generate you can look at the current Court, and if it’s 75% Hungarian/25% South Slavic (Croats will almost certainly not appear in the vanilla version) you make 75% of randomly generated courtiers Hungarians and the other 25% Croatian.

Maybe you don’t restrict it to courtier culture. The chance is based on the entire nobility, which happens to be 55% Hungarian, and 45% Croatian.

Or you keep a hard-coded, invisible, province-culture in the data-files and use that.

Which I do disagree with, for several reasons - some of which I listed in my previous post and other ones in preceding posts.

I’m not sure we disagree on anything that matters to me.

As a History guy I know everything is important. But since many things should clearly not make it into CK2, or only make it in an incredibly abstract form (ie: popular music), I’m not gonna bother debating you on this point unless you have a specific mechanic you want to implement.

In that case I’d have to look at the mechanic. I suspect your proposal would be something like events giving an ethnic Georgian Byzantine Emperor crap, and I can’t really argue because I know jack-shit about the internal politics of the Empire.

I'm mostly saddened that no one replied to my linguistics question regarding the historical balance between Frankish German and Gallic Latin in the French language, though!

What was the question?

I doubt I can answer, but repeating it can’t hurt.

Nick

 

[RedRooster81]

@Nuril: If I understood your question (as a gameplay question), it goes to culture groups, and I have asked it myself: should "French" (in the sense of modern northern France, not the Midi) be fitted with the Germanic group (with Bavarians, Swabians, Saxons, maybe Anglo-Saxons?) or the Latin group (Occitans, Catalans, Lombards, etc.). In terms of what happened historically, I would put the people of Paris and neighboring provinces in the Germanic group, because it puts some possible opposition to the Mediterranean.

The issue of culture groups (carried over from EU3) presupposes that having a realm whose cultures are all in the same group is beneficial for stability, etc. So you would have a more coherent (for lack of a better word) realm if you put what we now understand as southern France with northern Italy and eastern Iberia; and northern France (where the Franks lived) with the Holy Roman Empire. I don't mean to put more fuel on the culture debate (and this stuff will probably be easily moddable as in EU3), but there's my two red cents. I would suggest that when debating things like culture, that we think about how it will affect gameplay, based on real-world examples from the medieval era.

By the way, there seems to be a tendency to try to divide up France in CK, with all the mods that came out for CK1 creating an "Occitania" kingdom title. Does this suggest a desire for more kingdom titles or a lurking bias towards Occitan independence? I don't know, but the question has crossed my mind.

 

[Nuril]

My participation in this little debate was prompted by this quote from constantinople!:
(diff/nationality but same religion and same nationality but diff/religion should give mild problems, but large areas of diff-nationality and diff-religion should require effort to keep in check).

I agreed with him on religion. But nationality? Just not appropriate in CK.

Since then my point has been that any gameplay element linking stability/vassal loyalty/random rebel armies/etc. to culture would be inappropriate to the period.

Ah, alright. Agreed, then, for much of Europe at the time. The Arab/Bedouin/Berber, and so forth, groups did have some large problems with eachother independent of them sharing a religion, though. Also the Byzantines and them still having something of the "Barbarism beyond the frontier" mindset. Anyone know anything about the far east of Europe at the time? Like the Rus or the Non-Scandinavian pagan areas (Pechenegs or what have you)?

As a thought exercise, because I don’t actually support getting rid of province-culture:

K k. If I still thought you wanted to get rid of it it would seem like much more work for the coders than keeping it around.

Randomly generated courtiers will be much less prominent in CK2 because much of your Court will be Barons with their own families and histories.

Good to hear, unless it's with some sort of hard "gamebalance" stance and even the heavily pagan areas in Sweden end up with mostly/only Christian barons/counts and courtiers. I'm not sure if it's the Improvement Mod or vanilla DV, but when I see Blot-Sven as a Christian I facepalm pretty hard (with the nickname half of his name being the word for performing pagan sacrifices and all..). I suppose it could be because letting eastern Sweden be ruled by a pagan would mess gamebalance up pretty bad, given the "always fine to attack pagans" of CK1, but it's so wrong.. ;_; Here's to hoping a nice Casus Belli system will make such things unnecessary.

I’m not gonna bother debating you on this point unless you have a specific mechanic you want to implement.

In that case I’d have to look at the mechanic. I suspect your proposal would be something like events giving an ethnic Georgian Byzantine Emperor crap, and I can’t really argue because I know jack-shit about the internal politics of the Empire.

Not sure if you mean "mechanic" in the sense of "If there wasn't a Send Fosterlings option, I'd ask them to add one" or "There's already this feature around, what would you do with it", but I wouldn't ask them to add anything special to the Culture mechanic, really, just (in this case) make it more likely that foreigners be overthrown if they usurp the throne of the Empire. I see Russians sitting on the throne often, and it just wouldn't be that acceptable (especially since it always leads to ruin in Anatolia). I love the fact that there's going to be a Plotting system now, the Byzantines did oh-so-love their plotting after all, so now people that aren't superhuman saviour figures should face problems from Greek pretenders/legitimate dynasties. The Georgian thing was about culture groups (Georgia has been bundled in with Greek in a "Byzantine" culture group before, so the Scandinavian group is definitely closer. Wouldn't make sense to give them equal penalties, if any would be deemed sensible).

What was the question?

Pretty much what I said. We of course know that latin is fairly strong in French today, but I don't know the history between the Franks and the Gauls that well in the Medieval period so I don't know how much of a single language it was. So if the Frankish lords were pretty close to their German roots and ruling over a more latin-based population or if that's more of a Charlemagne thing and by the time of CK they had pretty much combined. This naturally affects the way the Normans assimilated into France from their Scandinavian origins. If the important people were still quite Germanic it'd be easier for 'em.

@Nuril: If I understood your question (as a gameplay question), it goes to culture groups, and I have asked it myself: should "French" (in the sense of modern northern France, not the Midi) be fitted with the Germanic group (with Bavarians, Swabians, Saxons, maybe Anglo-Saxons?) or the Latin group (Occitans, Catalans, Lombards, etc.). In terms of what happened historically, I would put the people of Paris and neighboring provinces in the Germanic group, because it puts some possible opposition to the Mediterranean.

Not entirely sure what you mean with "some possible opposition to the Mediterranean". But yeah, Culture groups create a weird situation of placing cultures together, that really should be in seperate groups, just for the sake of balance. This could possibly be solved with not having the groups be locked into one group (As in having the Franks in the German group and a "French" group and the latinized areas in the "French" group as well but also one closer to them), but I don't know if that's a possibility within the current culture-system without causing collisions.

; and northern France (where the Franks lived).

Great. So the North, along with Paris, is more germanized latin where-as the south wasn't?

By the way, there seems to be a tendency to try to divide up France in CK, with all the mods that came out for CK1 creating an "Occitania" kingdom title. Does this suggest a desire for more kingdom titles or a lurking bias towards Occitan independence? I don't know, but the question has crossed my mind.

I wouldn't know, maybe some Occitani want to see their home-area in the game (was there no Duke of Occitania?). I've certainly played the Kalmar county in CK.

 

[Nick B II]

By the way, there seems to be a tendency to try to divide up France in CK, with all the mods that came out for CK1 creating an "Occitania" kingdom title. Does this suggest a desire for more kingdom titles or a lurking bias towards Occitan independence? I don't know, but the question has crossed my mind.

Probably it's mostly a desire for more King-titles. But it doesn't hurt that the Occitans have extremely cool names, or that their most prominent Noble (the Duke of Aquitane) was freuently as prestigious as the King of France.

Nick

 

[constantinople!]

Some new items I thought after 'playtesting' CK1 again:

38. I missed not having a 'nationalities map' (functioning in the way the 'religions map' functions). Please add one! By the way, I've seen this political map preview and it looks great! I hope it stays in the game:

39. I've also seen this map in a preview:

Lots of nice details, however I see an effort to use the Greek 'tou' in place of the English "of". This doesn't take into account that Greek city names can be male, female or neutral. So, we have the male city 'Galatas', where 'Kleopas tou Galata' is correct (male Galatas loses the 's' in the genitive). However, we have the female city 'Edessa' and the correct form would be 'Arsenios tis Edessas' (female Edessa gains an 's' in the genitive, and the female form of 'tou' is 'tis'). As it is seen in the pic 'Arsenios tou Edessa' is wrong; better to leave it 'Arsenios of Edessa'. (I refer to the titles of local people visible in the above pic)

40. Sometimes when you declare war to a breakaway province, your ally declares war also. You conquer the province, but you select to just make the breakaway province your vassal again. Although after you made peace with him he is now part of your realm, your ally is still at war with him and can conquer him and make him part of his demense! This is wrong; your ally should quit the fight the moment the province becomed yours.

41. When I grant to my brother a kingdom title, thus creating a new Kingdom next to mine, I want to be able to relinquish all claims I have for provinces of his Kingdom. The game doesn't give me this option, and this can lead to wars. Can we have an option to relinquish our claims please?

42. When I grant a title to a fellow who has zero loyalty to me in my court, he begins ruling his new land with zero loyalty to me and I have to send him some gold right away or he may rebel. His loyalty should rise the moment I grant him the title.

I'll also add these to the list in the first post...

 

[RedRooster81]

Constantinople!

I think that there will be problems with some of the naming conventions, especially those that are automatic. Here I am thinking of patronymics in particular, for languages that have a lot of irregular forms, as in Castilian. So your problem with Greek names might be of the same pattern. But if what you mean is dynastic names, then all dynasts will have the same one, regardless of gender. So English forms might be preferable in some cases, as you say.

#40: This was an annoyance, especially when you were a vassal state in a far-flung empire. Case in point: I was playing as Apulia, and decided in a peace deal to submit to the emperor in Constantinople. Later, the Count of Foggia rebels and so do a lot of the Norman lords in southern Italy under my domain. I make peace, but Michael Doukas sends a general three years later, after losing over half of his father's empire and annexes all my reconquered vassals.

By the way, in the famous (or infamous) implosion of the HRE at the beginning of the 1066 campaign, the titles to almost every single county in Germany, Italy, and Burgundy is claimed by von Franken dynasty or some descendant. So it often happens that whoever vassalizes these free counties has to face a resurgent HRE by 1200 that goes on to force annex all these counties into its demesne. Doomdark has talked about claims being lost over time, within a generation or two in most cases, but I also want for the AI to consider vassalization of conquered territories preferable to annexation, which would be rather ahistorical IMHO, at least under feudalism.

#41 & 42: This seems completely reasonable. Some folks on this forum (I don't remember who, my apologies) IIRC have suggested that claims be restricted to ducal and kingdom titles, so that the AI does not go after barony and county titles with blind abandon. When you grant a county or even a kingdom to a courtier (including family) you still retain the claim in most cases and this claim goes to the next generation, which can produce some bitter conflicts. On the loyalty issue, I think that with the new relations system, this will be less of a problem (I pray it will be at least), so from my understanding most characters will have a zero rating with one another with plus or minor relations based on short or long term effects (-20 relations because your brother holds a claim to a county that you are keeping as your own demesne, +10 relations, liege is just, etc.)

You have put together quite a list so far. I hope that the developers have looked it over.

 

[Negru Voda]

On the loyalty issue, I think that with the new relations system, this will be less of a problem (I pray it will be at least), so from my understanding most characters will have a zero rating with one another with plus or minor relations based on short or long term effects (-20 relations because your brother holds a claim to a county that you are keeping as your own demesne, +10 relations, liege is just, etc.)

I think that you'll get stuff like "+30 Granted title: Count of Blabla"

As for the "tou Edessa" thing: Constantinopole's right, we could live with just "of Edessa". I think that maybe PI should consider recruiting the advisory help of the forum for a CKII expansion. Two representatives for each culture category in CKII, to advise on the correct implementation of linguistic flavor in the titles and family names. I'm not saying PI can't do this perfectly well alone, but I'm just thinking that there's already plenty of ready and willing expertise on offer from the forumers, which saves PI the need to develop it before implementing it (This way Nick II won't start moaning about cutting time and budget costs)

Nominees may decline. They are doing volunteer work after all. (which would obviously be noted in the credits, if that warms anyone up)


I nominate Constantinopole for the Greek culture.

 

[constantinople!]

And the Oscar goes to...

New Items to think over:

43. I've tried playing 2 kingdoms using the same savegame (by changing from one kingdom to the other every now and then) and saw that the game AI select advisors solely based on who has the higher skill, without checking for advisor loyalty. He could make a check (at least if the ruler has some skills) for loyalty before deciding to appoint his advisors.

44. Instant Character Bios! A nice touch would be to display bios of important characters! A clever script can create a cool bio from the data saved about each character. An example: (I put in [brackets] information not stored in CK1 that could possibly be stored in CK2):
Alexios Ducas, born 1150 in Constantinople, the 3rd son of Emperor of Byzantium Philippos Ducas and Aikaterini Skleros. He had a slight lisp problem since birth. [He spend his youth as fosterling in the county of Abydos] and received a military education, after which he was hailed as a Brilliant Strategist. [In 1167] he married Theodore Gavras, daughter of Prince of Trapezous Arsenios Gavras. [In the same year] he was appointed by his father Count of Thessaloniki and [in 1169] Prince of Thessaloniki. After his father's assassination / death by the plague / death by natural causes / death in battle / etc. in 1175, he succeeded him in the throne as Emperor of Byzantium, bypassing his elder brothers due to the Empire's Salic Consanguinity law. During his reign [if item 29 about official Kingdom history is implemented, here could be listed the noteworthy events that happened during his reign]. After the death of his wife in 1180 from natural causes, he married Anna Palaiologos, daughter of the Duke of Athens. He has 3 children by his first wife: Crown Prince Dimitrios (born 1170, appointed Count of Kaisaria in 1186), Prince Athanasios (born 1172, currently serving as Chancellor of the Empire), Princess Angeliki (born 1174) and 1 child by his 2nd wife, Prince Theophylaktos (born 1182). [He has survived 2 assassination attempts to date.] //The game could change the last part after his death to: He had 3 children by his 1st wife and 2 children by his 2nd wife. [After surviving 3 assassination attempts] he was eventually assassinated in 1190 and was succeeded by his son Dimitrios, Duke of Kaisaria.)
You could rely on saved data to present instant bios on every character in the game, but you could also save some more details for any character who held the title of King/Emperor during his life in order for the lives of fictional Kings to be presented in more detail.

45. Resolving disputes between your Dukes and your Counts: We learn of problems between a Duke and his Count vassal when the Count suddenly declares war on him. However, before that extreme point is reached, and since we are the King of the realm, the Count could approach us which his grievance against his Duke and ask us to mediate. If the problem is unsolvable, we could decide to take the Count from the Duke's vassalage and make him our direct vassal until the death of either the Count or the Duke, after which the province will go back to being the Duke's vassal. (This also happened with grievances between a Bishop and his Metropolitan, with the Patriarch making the Bishop 'Archbishop' for a while, directly answerable to the Patriarch).

46. We must be able to break our Alliance with another nation. If their Ruler receives the Kinslayer or Heretic trait or amasses negative prestige points, would we want to be still allied with such a person? And if he starts a war and we choose not to participate, the alliance could be automatically dissolved. Also, if I get the Kinslayer or Heretic trait or have large infamy or realm duress, my ally could choose to terminate our alliance.

47. Sometimes someone wants to be my vassal and I do not want him to become my vassal, perhaps after he asks me 3 times in a row, and I continue to refuse, I can say to him 'I don't want you to become my vassal' for him to leave me alone?

48. I have perfect relations with the huge Kingdom of Russia. Then suddenly a vassal of mine, because he has some claim, stupidly decides to start a war with Russia. Can I say to the Russian King, don't worry, I'll deal with the troublesome vassal, it's my internal affair, and go punish the fellow and force him to revoke his declaration of war or even force him to let go of his claim?

49. The present event dialog that offers you to make peace with the 'heathens' is largely unusable because if you make peace through the dialog, any of your vassals who were at war with this Heathen remains at war with him. Pls make sure the peace through this dialog is handled like making peace through the normal game options.

50. Any character who dies while fighting Muslim/Pagan armies can receive a 'Martyr' trait and 1000 piety bonus points. If a character has a 'martyr' trait, it could be easier to declare him a 'Saint' afterwards!

51. Can I be able to organize and send a diplomatic mission to a foreign ruler bearing expensive gifts and negotiate a mutual renouncement of our claims against each other (including claims of our vassals?) even exchanging a province or two, to make a significant improvement in our relations and avert a future war? Perhaps I could even choose who will head this diplomatic mission, affecting the chances of success/failure!

52. I have a small state next to me who I outnumber 10 to 1 in army power. I offer him vassalisation and he stubbornly refuses repeatedly. Then I have to declare war to him in order to annex his state. - But can there be another step in-between? Can I DEMAND his vassalisation? This would mean that I'm giving him an ultimatum that I'll use force against him and make him think twice before refusing my 'generous' offer.

53. On that note, can we present ultimatums to other powers? The Sultan of the Seljuks could come to me and say 'surrender some provinces of Asia Minor to me or I'll declare war on you', before actually declares war on me. I could say to the King of Croatia, give me this province or I'll declare war to you, etc.

54. I hear about filters being implemented to help us choose brides. I'd like to request a filter that lets me choose from daughters of Reigning Kings, or Reigning Dukes, or Reigning Counts, or from all 3 of these categories together.

55. Some islands in the new map are divided by a nice curved authentic-looking border (ie Crete). Others are divided by a single random arbitrary-looking straight line (ie Cyprus). Cosmetic correction please!

56. When I play CK1 from 1066 and I reach the 1400s the game-engine bends on its knees by the mass of accumulated data. For example when I visit the Bride-Selection screen or Our-Dynasty screen the delay is noticeable and sometimes the game even crashes! Can there be a safety device where the game after seeing that the accumulated data reached a critical point can choose to 'forget' some less important data? You know, the files of the era were not too trustworthy. A fire in your library and there went all your past records!

57. Anniversaries! My Emperor/King would like an event to celebrate his anniversary of assuming the Throne or Coming of Age, every 10-years or something. And perhaps during realm duress these celebrations are not able to occur? (Who has time for celebrations when fighting for survival!)

58. The game could start earlier than 1066. I know that some say that the earliest possible starting date is 1054, the date of the Orthodox-Catholic schism, because before that some serious game mechanics would need to change, so one could say that starting 12 years earlier (1066=>1054) would not make much of a change. However, contrary to popular belief, the schism only reached a critical point in 1054, because it officially started almost 50 years before: Various alterations in the liturgy which had appeared in Rome during that times (for example, the use of unleavened bread in mass, which started in the 9th century) complicated its relationship with the other 4 patriarchates of the Pentarchy (which after the fall of the other 3 Patriarchates to the 'heathens', had in effect become a Diarchy of Rome and Constantinople). However, when the Patriarch of Rome, Pope Sergius IV (1009-1012), added the 'filioque' clause in the Nicene Creed to the formal papers that announced his election to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Patriarch Sergius II (1001-1019) deemed this act a direct violation of the Ecumenical Councils and severed communion with Rome (Schism of the two Sergiuses) because to change the Creed without an Ecumenical Council constituted heresy (as decreed the Councils themselves). Rome unilaterally adopted a practice which had spread in the West during these times, despite efforts of earlier Popes to thwart it (for example Pope Leo III (795-816) specifically forbad the addition of the 'filioque', and had the unaltered Nicene Creed engraved in silver tablets displayed over the tomb of Apostle Peter for all to see). So communion was severed in 1009 and thus begun the schism which solidified in 1054 by the exchange of anathemas. The game can start in 1009 without significant changes to its mechanics, offering 450 years of gameplay!

59. I read about the change that a Count of a province located, say, in France, but being under the King of England, would give resources to both the King of England and the King of France. This sounds good and I don't know how it will work in practice, but it should not limit the player. Some thoughts: If the King of France is a bitter enemy of me or I'm at war with him, could I order my vassal in France to sever all relations with the King of France? The vassal could accept, but the order could also backfire on me, with the vassal who may be alone surrounded by French territory deciding he'll became a vassal of France instead! Or perhaps if I inherit a province in France the province could give resources to the King of France, essentially still remaining part of his realm (as it should, see Item 25 in the 1st post), but if I conquered that province and it is given to me by the peace treaty then it becomes mine and it gives nothing to the French King. I can't imagine a province of Byzantium conquered by the Seljuks to be allowed to still give resources to the Emperor of Byzantium. On the other hand, while the population of the province remained Greek and their religion Orthodox, they could be giving resources to Byzantium, even without the knowledge/approval of the Seljuks - but the moment the province converts to Islam and its culture changes from Greek to Turkish, all resources given to Byzantium should end.

 

[Count Lake]

Constantinople!-

Please don't get me wrong and think I'm attacking you because I think that many of the things you suggest have the chance of distinct and proper usage within this upcoming game, especially in the category of diplomacy.

I (and I suspect many others) want this game released within the next year and a half. Lets face the absolute fact that Paradox is and likely never will be an EA size publisher with millions of dollars and tons of manpower to throw around. It's literally a few dozen people sitting around desks in a normal office space that have to accomplish this task while also supporting dozens of other projects at the same time. If we want to see this game in the next decade, things will have to be cut and I suspect that while many new features will emerge we will still be left with a framework that is decidedly close to the original CK in function. That's perfect considering that CK is undoubtedly the best medieval simulation on the market even with all of its foibles.


Instant character bios sounds great but lets consider for a second just how much computing that would take for the game if it was anywhere near as detailed as you suggested. The game has enough trouble handling the numerous events, plots, friendships, intrigues, claims, rivalries etc. and it is really only one step away from being "Medieval Spreadsheets". Seriously, if half the stuff submitted here made it into the final game then it would take so long to process a "turn" or find the info that you wanted through the umpteen buttons and shortcuts on the screen that it would basically be an exercise of pause-play-pause-play-pause-play every couple days.

I want to be able to play at least a couple years in a single sitting, making impressive and dynamic decisions in the form of the familiar event system rather than struggle through a few months because I had to micromanage each of my vassals in the myriad ways that you seem to want. Its may seem like we just have different play styles (what makes mine right and yours wrong?) but like I said it comes down to what a company the size of Paradox will be able to handle and what supporters of a basically revamped CK I experience are willing to put up with. Changing the formula to the degree that playing through a game causes major computer stress, significant slowdown in the game itself or any number of other factors will leave me in serious doubt as to whether or not Paradox receives my support as a customer.

You may also say that it is taking the easy way out for a company to improve as little as possible over its existing formula in an effort to pump its customers for cash (ex. Madden series). I know that I likely sound like a crotchety old man waving my cane at kids to get them off my lawn but I'm simply trying to be realistic. Paradox is a company interested in making money and they already have a great formula from the previous entry in the series. Lets see them give the best and most stable followup they can while not driving away the people that loved and enjoyed the simpler aspects of the game and aren't interested in having a load of micromanagement dumped in our laps.

 

[constantinople!]

I'm just submitting ideas, I'm not forcing anyone, it depends on the developers to judge if any of them is worthy to be included in the game, personally I'd be happy if just one makes it in the final game. As for the character bios, the game can generate the bio of the character you ask the moment you press a 'show bio' button from the data currently in memory, and will forget about it after you read it. I proposed to use a clever script to do it instantly. If the Commodore 64 could do it in 1984 (anyone played Level 9 adventure games?), I guess a today's PC can also do it...

 

[Kaelic]

Instant character bios sounds great but lets consider for a second just how much computing that would take for the game if it was anywhere near as detailed as you suggested.

If it's deterministic bio generation, you only need to generate it when you go to that specific character's bio. The cost to generate it wouldn't really be significant at all here. Writing the code to generate decent bios however costs man-hours. Man-hours probably better spent making the gameplay better .

#10 Is an awesome idea by the way, PI should really consider that.

 

[Panjer]

In that screenshot I think I saw 'bishop of Hagia Sofia'. Nice touch!