The 759 scenario is really messed up

[napoleon3010]

I love that this mod tries to make life in medieval times harder and more challenging but I do not understand why I pick a character like the duke of Flandern and often have to restart because he died without getting any children. That is really unfair. You have to deal with the age of the characters at the beginning. Now they are way too old to play with them properly from the beginning.

 

[Rylock]

I love that this mod tries to make life in medieval times harder and more challenging but I do not understand why I pick a character like the duke of Flandern and often have to restart because he died without getting any children. That is really unfair. You have to deal with the age of the characters at the beginning. Now they are way too old to play with them properly from the beginning.

What does this have to do with the mod, exactly?

You pick an old character with no children to begin your game, chances are pretty good that your game may end pretty quickly. I'm unsure how this differs from vanilla.

 

[napoleon3010]

There is a huge difference. In the vanilla version you have a very great chance of building a big dynasty even if you pick a character who is around 60 to 70 years old. Because of the limited life expectancy of characters in this mod which is clearly a good thing the age of characters at the beginning has to be decreased otherwise some of the characters are just non playable unless you have plenty of luck.

 

[Rylock]

There is a huge difference. In the vanilla version you have a very great chance of building a big dynasty even if you pick a character who is around 60 to 70 years old. Because of the limited life expectancy of characters in this mod which is clearly a good thing the age of characters at the beginning has to be decreased otherwise some of the characters are just non playable unless you have plenty of luck.

Umm...no. Fertility isn't different. A male character is unlikely to have children after 65 -- period. Same as in vanilla.

Life expectancy is lowered, I suppose, depending on how healthy the character is...but if you're starting off with a very old and childless character, that's really your own doing. Either make a new character with the ruler designer or pick another starting position. The idea that we can or should make every single beginning ruler equally playable is...a bit ridiculous, to be honest.

 

[LordPeter]

There is a huge difference. In the vanilla version you have a very great chance of building a big dynasty even if you pick a character who is around 60 to 70 years old. Because of the limited life expectancy of characters in this mod which is clearly a good thing the age of characters at the beginning has to be decreased otherwise some of the characters are just non playable unless you have plenty of luck.

This game isn't balanced in terms of starting positions, only in terms of gameplay.
Even the game devs have made this clear, and I think it is obvious that starting as some countries is far easier than others (e.g. Frace in EUIV, Karlings in CK2). That's why there is a slider showing your character's difficulty at game start.

I agree that playing old characters has an increased difficulty in this mod compared to vanilla, but tbh I think that vanilla is wrong in that regard. People would seldomly grow really old in the middle ages, and even today you can see that older people tend to die sooner than younger ones ().
At most we could wish for another hint at the selection screen, which shows "difficulty: old ruler: +++" or something like that; but I think you can't mod that.

And yeah, if you want to start as an "impossible" country, use ruler designer: It's the easiest way of reducing character age without screwing up history completely for all the other players. I use it all the time

 

[napoleon3010]

I don't want the characters to be equal neither the mod to be less difficuild I just find it kind of unfair that there more than a few characters you have very big problems to handle at the beginning. I just wanted that the start are balanced in the way that you simply don't have to restart the game before your character dies by natural causes and does not leave any heirs. That is just not good for the flow of gaming. Say what you want. I just want to state that there is nothing I wanna change in terms of difficuilty or playability except for starting conditions.

 

[Rylock]

I don't want the characters to be equal neither the mod to be less difficuild I just find it kind of unfair that there more than a few characters you have very big problems to handle at the beginning. I just wanted that the start are balanced in the way that you simply don't have to restart the game before your character dies by natural causes and does not leave any heirs. That is just not good for the flow of gaming. Say what you want. I just want to state that there is nothing I wanna change in terms of difficuilty or playability except for starting conditions.

So...you don't want the starting characters to all be equal, but you do want to not have any starting characters that are inherently more difficult to play.

Sorry, but those mean the same thing.

Pick your starting position with care. If a character is very old and childless, you might want to consider using the ruler designer to replace them...or play someone else. That's the nature of the game, in all bookmarks. If you have a suggestion that would make it easier, we're all ears, but making it so very old rulers can easily have lots of children isn't going to be happening.

 

[napoleon3010]

Why don't you reduce the character age at the beginning. That's the point nothing else.

 

[lopiko]

Why don't you reduce the character age at the beginning. That's the point nothing else.

Because the start points are somewhat historical, just like the game.

They arent going to make a character younger than it was in reality just to make the game easier. This game is about history.

 

[Rylock]

Why don't you reduce the character age at the beginning. That's the point nothing else.

So...change the birthdates (many of which are historical) for every ruler who might be too old and childless in a given bookmark? Or just this one you seem determined to play in particular?

If you just insist on playing this one character, and refuse to use the ruler designer, then mod it yourself. Find their character ID in the title, look them up in the character file under their culture...bam, done.

If it's the former, then no.

 

[MorgannaZio]

Why don't you reduce the character age at the beginning. That's the point nothing else.

Roflmao. Why don't you just make your own ruler? Your gripe is hilarious.

Let's use logic here - if you pick an old character, vanilla or not, he's going to die. If you don't have kids, you're going to lose.

Let's take the next step.

Play a NOT old character, or use the ruler designer to make a ruler of the same age but with a son.

I mean... why are you asking the mod makers to "fix" this?

 

[EU3NOOB]

This thread is so much into fail...


Seriously though, maybe OP doesn't have the Ruler Designer?

 

[Darky]

Pick another character maybe?

 

[Tyon]

Start game
open console
charinfo
look up character ID
age "ID" -the age you wanna decrease


fin

 

[napoleon3010]

thank you that was the first real helpful answer thank you.

 

[Senshi_x]

It was the first real helpful answer because you failed to pose a proper question.

Apparently, what you wanted to ask is: "How can I make it so my specific character (duke of flanders) has a better chance of surviving so he can found a dynasty before dying off in the 759 start date?"

Instead you used a very provocative title ("...really messed up") and complain about character age at the starting date in general being inbalanced. Which is less of a question than opening a discussion. Which is why a discussion ensued, with people explaining why making every char at start date of "playable" age is a bit ridiculous.

This is a helpful community, but it's also just humans. Being clear and precise in asking and is a good way to make people want to help you. Being aggressive rarely helps.

Regarding the discussion about age: Life expectancy in the Middle Ages wasn't that drastically lower compared to today - if you exempt infant deaths. Child mortality was drastically higher back then, meaning most early deaths happened in the first couple of months and years of life. Once you managed to survive childhood, chances of getting "regular old" (70) were fairly solid. It's just the overall statistics obviously get skewed a lot if a lot more people die at the very beginning of life.

 

[LordPeter]

Regarding the discussion about age: Life expectancy in the Middle Ages wasn't that drastically lower compared to today - if you exempt infant deaths. Child mortality was drastically higher back then, meaning most early deaths happened in the first couple of months and years of life. Once you managed to survive childhood, chances of getting "regular old" (70) were fairly solid. It's just the overall statistics obviously get skewed a lot if a lot more people die at the very beginning of life.

Sorry to keep that discussion going, but I do slightly disagree on that one point (everything else you said 100% agreed).

I do find 70 to be a little too optimistic, given that as you said "life expectancy" is the average above all people born. Thus that term (again, as you said) includes chidbirth mortality, which accounts for a significant amount of deaths for both mother and child. Maybe "longevity" would be a better word to represent what is the subject of debate; but then again, that word is not clearly defined.
How long a person could - statistically - expect to live after he or she reached a certain age, e.g. maybe maturity, is the thing that is for debate. However, you can't precisely talk about numbers unless you draw an arbitrary line. It all depends on how old the person is at the time you are asking - unless you take the generalized "life expectancy", which is, of course really low in the middle ages due to childbirth.

If you take a quick glance at Wikipedia (best source ever ), the problem is shown quite handsomely: First by the lack of precise numbers (not many statisticians back then), and second by the dynamic nature of anything but the (not helpful) "life expectancy".
It is said there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy), under the point "Life expectancy at older age", that in Classical Rome: "If a child survived to age 10, life expectancy was an additional 37.5 years, a total of 47.5 years."; whereas in Late Medieval England: "At age 21, life expectancy was an additional 43 years (total age 64)."
Those are differnt statistical numbers, and they can't be compared properly. However, they show two things: Infant mortality matters very much, and the older you are, they longer you can expect to live.
The idal strategy would thus be just to grow older, because then, statistically, you will live longer!

Obviousely that would be a false belief, resulting from a wrong interpretation of statistics. The truth is, that you will die eventually, and the more people the same age as you die while you still live, the better off you are statistically. Those death before a certain point of age will thenforth be no longer included, compensating diminishing factors auch as childbirth, while also distortioning the picture: Those that died from the pneunomia at 9 would maybe have died at age 39 just as well. And the Bubonic Plague hardly cared about age when it struck.

Another interesting (and I think, fitting) number is the Medieval Islamic Caliphate: Average lifespan of scholars was 59–84.3 years in the Middle East, and 69–75 in Islamic Spain.
These are numbers in the category you were thinking I guess. Mind you, however, that those were scholars. They were likely higly educated, had good healthcare (the Caliphate was much more progressive than Europe in its Golden Age), did no hard labour and weren't involved in fighting.
Not the average medieval person then

The average medieval person of course could very well grow old. But as I pointed out three paragraphs above, you would only have good chances to reach 70 if you were quite old already, let's asume maybe 25. So the game should thus be far more punishing with young rulers, and far less with olders, right? Not entirely right.
If you take a constant tick of 1% of population deaths per year of age, your additional life expectancy would stay constant (unless I did the math wrong). So you would always, let's say, may hope life an addition 20 years. In the end, this would mean that someone would still life at the end of all times, and so this model can't be useful. Additional life expectancy has to go down with age, to get the maximum life span capped at a certain age (122 years 164 days in humans until now). So older people have to die eventually, and proportionally more of them have to die each additional year of age. In the end, 100% of the remaining ones have to die.

Sorry for this unstructured babbling about statistics, and I think I haven't quite yet come to the point (there being any), but it has gotten late, and this wasn't really a discussion about longevity in the first place was it? Sorry for derailing

Anyway, 70 is very optimistic for a medieval person to achieve. Not only child mortality, but also famines, fighting and diseases were harsh. I'd assume around 50 years for the guy who survived infanty in-game, that is at age 16, might be a good guess. Yes of course you can get 70. That's why many players don't let their ruler ride into war. Mostly impossible in reality.


Edit: Some more on this:
"However, by the time the 13th-Century boy had reached 20 he could hope to live to 45, and if he made it to 30 he had a good chance of making it into his fifties."
(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/241864.stm)

 

[Senshi_x]

Nice writeup, LordPeter .

I am aware that the topic is much more complicated than I stated, I really just wasn't in the mood to go into more details, because I also don't think it's really the point of the thread. My estimation of 60-70 might be a bit a high, I just wanted to say that it certainly wasn't a miraculous feat for people to get that old (someone had to be the village elders, after all ).

I do agree that statistics are often troublesome to interpret, there's a reason it's part of advanced education in may study programs as dedicated courses.
Some of your points are written a bit confusingly, but there's no point in arguing, it's clear that we really support the same point.

---

In CK2+, mortality feels pretty plausible. My rulers happily die at the most inopportune moments at all ages due to all kinds of reasons; ranging from "intense lovemaking" while being in the early twenties to a blind possessed insane maimed imbecile that doesn't want to kick the bucket despite being well past his 70th birthday .

 

[LordPeter]

Nice writeup, LordPeter .

I am aware that the topic is much more complicated than I stated, I really just wasn't in the mood to go into more details, because I also don't think it's really the point of the thread. My estimation of 60-70 might be a bit a high, I just wanted to say that it certainly wasn't a miraculous feat for people to get that old (someone had to be the village elders, after all ).

I do agree that statistics are often troublesome to interpret, there's a reason it's part of advanced education in may study programs as dedicated courses.
Some of your points are written a bit confusingly, but there's no point in arguing, it's clear that we really support the same point.

---

In CK2+, mortality feels pretty plausible. My rulers happily die at the most inopportune moments at all ages due to all kinds of reasons; ranging from "intense lovemaking" while being in the early twenties to a blind possessed insane maimed imbecile that doesn't want to kick the bucket despite being well past his 70th birthday .

Yeah, I see we both agree on that point.
And yeah, I wrote this pretty late, so I was already tired, and it reads pretty confusing right now even to me ^^
Surely I also agree that the lifespans feel pretty realistic in CK2Plus.
So I guess we can close this discussion and go back to work (or gaming) now

 

[Dhekelian]

Surely folk like Kings, Royalty, Monks could expect a higher life span due to their access to medics even if they were primitive although their diet could work against them sometimes. Bede was just a monk but got to the age of 63, not saying they all would but a possibility?