T&T Initial Impressions

[Aidanator800]

One of my favorite things to do in the new expansion is go on pilgrimages. This is especially fun during my current Nestorian Byzantium run, as I get to lead a large caravan of people on this great adventure as far as India, and it really feels like an achievement getting over there and back again.

 

[The Three-Headed Monkey]

The DLC is a great addition to CK3 and offers so many fantastic choices.
Thank you for your work!

Just five more ideas:
-pinned characters' memories should persist on death
- in spectator mode you can unfortunately see little of tours and tournaments. It would be nice if you could have an insight into the course of events - especially the tournaments
-in spectator mode there is hardly any information about the activities of the regents - more please
- there should be an option to automatically repair old items
- it should be possible to display other characters from foreign countries in the barbershop without the abbility to edit their appearance

 

[Rider_of_Doom]

Speed 5 is way too fast for the expansion. Before you notice an activity happens you already can't join it anymore because you will not arrive in time. Don't really like that because I normally default to that speed when nothing happens at all and I just want to idle around a bit or simply kill some time. Another case why this game desperately needs something akin to the message settings in all the other Paradox games....

 

[Aregodas]

On my very first trip, my wife became my regent and also traveled with me. That's not a good sign.

My first travel was to a Grand Tournament and my brother became regent. So far, so expected. Count me surprised however when the same brother showed up at the Grand Tournament because he also is my knight, and took part in the tournament. Not only that, I had two events during the melee that featured him in different positions on the battlefield.

Event checks have literally been a main point of criticism on this forum for soo long..

Wow, I had the exact same situation. My bro being my knight and regent came along for the melee and appeared in the very first event.

Just five more ideas:
..........
- there should be an option to automatically repair old items

There should a tick box for each individual item IMO.

I haven't played much yet, haven't had time today but... honestly, the fact that my very first trip makes my regent follow me instead of staying back to manage things... look, two of the main selling points of both the update and the DLC and it immediately goes awry, doesn't bode well at all.
Has there been any actual testing? This oversight seems so blunt and on the face that it makes me doubt it; something that I had never done before TBH. I always thought, despite the bugs and things, there was a lot of testing involved... so this particular case feels so so so wrong it defies my expectations.

 

[X_FloW]

It's fun so far, but here are some of the bugs I've noticed.

- You can sometimes dismiss courtiers that aren't yours.
- Intent shows as succeeded but nothing actually happens. (i.e I succeeded at forming an alliance at a wedding, but no alliance was formed whatsoever)
- Regents being outside of their realm (I guess even the regent needs his own regent)
- Flickering hook icon in character interaction menu
- New born children have adult/grown up appearance (honestly this was really hilarious)
- Getting ghost court events/pings when traveling

Overall, the content is high quality and immersive, I'm having so much fun so far.

 

[heliostellar]

I do not like that Regents taking place of Spouse in GUI screen. Also, a person on reddit reported somehow his spouse was travelling with him and still was regent, hence proved PDX again failed in respect of checks.

This is pretty much the only issue I have. The DLC is also REALLY good!

 

[Hvymtlboy]

The children going off to meat their peers w/o your permission is pretty bad. I only ever used that event if I was trying to get a potential heir killed w/o disinheriting them.

 

[TravlingCanuck]

Wow, I had the exact same situation. My bro being my knight and regent came along for the melee and appeared in the very first event.

Same here, except it was my spouse. Started a quick game as Mathilda just to check out some of the new features. The Kaizer almost immediately sponsors a Grand Tournament. Great! My new husband is my presumptive regent. That's fine, he's competent and likes me. The game tells me I'm not going to make it to the tourney in time. Uh oh. Oh well, I'll try anyway, just to check out the travel mechanics. Hey, there's a spot to hire a Caraven Master. I appoint an Average one and suddenly I'm going to make it in time. Awesome! But there's some severe danger spots. Can't figure out exactly where they are, but I guess it's from crossing the Alps. Hire some mountain folks and some regular guards and ta da! The road ahead is clear.

All awesome stuff so far! I bid hubbie good bye, ask him not to ruin the treasury while I'm gone and ... discover he's travelling with me on the first event. Umm, how can you be Regent when I can't be Duchess and we're travelling in the exact same entourage??? Ugh.

PS that first event was a line of ants. Turns out my husband is a superstitious fellow, so I agree to walk around the ants ... which takes 5 days ?! What's with these ants??

Second event is some big guy in the road, challenging me to a fight. He makes a point of telling me that he has defeated "many women" in fights and he'll beat me, too. Seiously, dude? That's what you're bragging about. I don't like this bully of women so I tell my whole entourage to rush him and we just trample over him. Get this, though, supposedly this causes a 30 day delay in our travel ?! I think that's a notification error, though, because after trampling him (hubbie got injured when we rushed him by the way; serves him right for not staying home to be regent like he's supposed to) we make it to the tourney a couple of days early (the third event allowed me to gain 7 days by translating for our caravan master, offsetting the ant delay).

Anyway, dev team: is it that difficult to set an "is_regent" check when figuring out who can join our entourage to keep your Regent from coming with you? I mean, maybe it is difficult, this is legitimately a question. But if you can prevent your Regent from travelling with you, for heaven's sake please immediately do so. It's just weird right now.

 

[Tilarium]

I do not like that Regents taking place of Spouse in GUI screen. Also, a person on reddit reported somehow his spouse was travelling with him and still was regent, hence proved PDX again failed in respect of checks.

Not just spouse regents. In my last attempt at a game, my Ásatrú Count from Catholic Holland/Flanders went to a blot held over in Norway. His regent came with him even though she had no religion. She came because she too was Ásatrú and all the Ásatrú from his realm went.

Everything should had instead place regent in gui like heir.

Much better idea!

 

[Karlington]

Speed 5 is way too fast for the expansion. Before you notice an activity happens you already can't join it anymore because you will not arrive in time. Don't really like that because I normally default to that speed when nothing happens at all and I just want to idle around a bit or simply kill some time. Another case why this game desperately needs something akin to the message settings in all the other Paradox games....

I wish they'd implement message settings* that let you pause on certain notifications, like CK2 (and most other Paradox GS games) had.

*It's been the most upvoted suggestion by far on the forums for ages. Unfortunately that does not seem to matter in the slightest.

Has anyone actually had a stress reducing event when attending someone else's hunt with the recreation intention. Several hunts with that intention and not once have I lost any stress.

That sounds really stressful.

 

[gamerk2]

My first travel was to a Grand Tournament and my brother became regent. So far, so expected. Count me surprised however when the same brother showed up at the Grand Tournament because he also is my knight, and took part in the tournament. Not only that, I had two events during the melee that featured him in different positions on the battlefield.

Event checks have literally been a main point of criticism on this forum for soo long..

Speaking as a SW Engineer: The issue is that for literally *every* event that does a check, every possibility needs to be accounted for. In this case, I'd guess brother got auto-included due to being "close family" and the auto-include didn't check for "is regent".

That's the downside to having event-driven activities: there's *always* going to be some conditions that fall through the cracks. PDX should really have a dedicated team just for fixing them as they come up, which would certainly help stability over the long haul.

 

[Whoever]

One thing: Holding Court should be a Grand Activity

 

[BavarianKing]

Speed 5 is way too fast for the expansion. Before you notice an activity happens you already can't join it anymore because you will not arrive in time. Don't really like that because I normally default to that speed when nothing happens at all and I just want to idle around a bit or simply kill some time. Another case why this game desperately needs something akin to the message settings in all the other Paradox games....

This is crazy. I think the game feels more overwhelming now. But I like that. playing speed 3 feels exactly right right now. But for tournaments even speed 3 is too fast!

 

[ActionJackson]

I will echo that Speed 5 is just not doable now, and on my test game last night I started to get some performance issues ca 1200s that I wasn't dealing with before (I'm on a laptop, so that's to be expected).

Overall impressions for me are positive, though. Obviously I found the same bugs many other people found, including some errors where I saw filenames instead of names of events at tournaments. I can tell this DLC will give me another solid 50-60 hours of play once it's patched up, which is worth the price of admission imo.

 

[Rider_of_Doom]

This is crazy. I think the game feels more overwhelming now. But I like that. playing speed 3 feels exactly right right now. But for tournaments even speed 3 is too fast!

I would agree that the game feels more overwhelming now but that mostly boils down to lacking QoL because we are missing things to automate/pre-set things so we are forced to participate in a lot of unnecessary busywork which shouldn't be needed. For example successors of Accolades: It only costs 150 prestige which is worth less than a single penny in the current prestige inflated economy of the game so why do we have to manually search for one every time? It could be simply automated and it is so cheap it wouldn't even matter if it would cost prestige or not. Another example are artifacts: When you can afford them you are normally also being able to easily repair them. Why isn't there an option for the player to tick a box to automatically artifacts for the selected slots? Or give us an option to directly throw an artifact into the trash bin after it is created in case the artifact deserves that instead of forcing the player to go into the inventory to search it out first while the artifact overview also becomes horrible when you gathered some excess artifacts. Same applies to picking out a target during T&T events when you have to scroll through 50+ participants. I could "rant" even more about that and in the end it simply always boils down to: I really like the UI and its presentation but my personal UX is horrible and gets worse with each major patch/expansion. And simply relying on mods to circumvent that just feels like a bandaid solution, especially since you are always at mercy of them being updated.


Aside from that I really like the content additions of the patch and expansion, although any kind of balancing was thrown out of the window once again just like with Royal Court. And I still have to see if it doesn't become a bit too tedious down the road in the future for me because while you don't need to join every event which is happening around you, not doing it could put you at a potential disadvantage (unlike helding court) because of how insanely unbalanced the rewards are (also artifacts in general are way more crazy right now). In the end- at least overall - this expansion leaves me more hopeful for the overall future unlike Royal Court which was a huge disappointment for me.

 

[Haze88]

Has anyone actually had a stress reducing event when attending someone else's hunt with the recreation intention. Several hunts with that intention and not once have I lost any stress.

Didn't notice this but I have noticed the befriend option gives you +10 (romance) with no friendship formed. Not sure if I need to do it multiple times but the idea it's classed as romance seems to be the reason nothing happens since in these instances neither character is gay and interestingly enough I cannot target the hosts who may be a woman on things like hunts to interact with directly

 

[davidproxy]

I had a fantastic time last night. I was playing as Hermenexildo of Santiago and got to watch the Umayyads and my own family both get cut down drastically in wars around Iberia. So much so that a daughter living in France currently possesses the majority of living members of my house. So I'm not certain but combat seems more lethal and I feel that I've seen a lot of orphans coming to court that lost their parents in combat actions, siege, childbirth, and other things. Hermenexildo, surprisingly, survived all of the wars but became a drunkard when his wife and soulmate died in childbirth. On his way to Canterbury to pray God for the strength to become a teetotal, he died randomly on the road at the relatively young age of 43. I haven't had a character die this young since CK2. This was exciting because he had something like 12 children and my heir got a King title and 1 county. Normally, my characters live until their late 60s so I wasn't ready or expecting a succession event. Fortunately, the internecine warfare in the region saw nearly all of his brothers die childless and the heir (also called Hermenexildo) got most of his father's counties back and I lost one troublesome and powerful vassal to the road as he was travelling to (I think) pay me homage.

I haven't been gotten to do any tournaments, weddings or pilgrimages (Hermenexildo I died just after setting out on his) yet. The Struggle has caused there to be a lot of low control counties so its dangerous to travel and I've seen a lot of other characters go missing/die on the road; which is cool. I am immeasurably pleased to see how dangerous the world is and the feeling of needing my bodyguards (who are generally my acclaimed knights) to protect me. Hunts are pretty fun although I have most stayed around Santiago for safety reasons. I haven't gotten a chance to try out falconry either. I really like the scar system and how many maimed (as in missing body parts) warriors I'm seeing. I look at all of them and feel that I'm looking at true grizzled veterans of numerous actions and sorties. It also feels like a protracted war could drain a Kingdom of their best and brightest warriors and take a generation to recover. I observed in one large battle between the Ummayads and myself about 13 of them died in a single battle (not to mention the ones that died of their wounds soon after) splitting their realms and forcing their children into entrenched regencies.

The dlc is awesome and I cannot wait to play more tonight.

 

[Zylathas]

One thing: Holding Court should be a Grand Activity

This is absolutely a great idea if they ever take another look at royal court (like the stellaris team also does). Perhaps introduce a version too where you can hold a court while on a grand tour to resemble the itnirant courts of the earlier starts.

 

[Torredebelem]

Buggy and very unbalanced in the rewards, at least in what Prestige and Prowess are concerned. My modest wedding gave me about 1400 Prestige!? I got a +9 Prowess weapon in my first tournment!?
Overall it is a better DLC than Royal Court but as I suspected, to me it is not what this game needs to really improve.

 

[Silens]

I love this expansion! My glorious duel tournament, worth every piece of gold I put into it:

1st bout:
"Of course he'll concede to his liege"

2nd bout:
"Of course he'll concede to his liege"

Finals:
"Of course he'll concede to his liege"

Me without lifting a finger: