so you are telling me, your court has you and your close family, 5 councilers with wives or maybe without, and 180 children?
I find that rather hard to believe
Thoughts on the Court Size Mechanic?
- Thread starter Kurblius
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so you are telling me, your court has you and your close family, 5 councilers with wives or maybe without, and 180 children?
I find that rather hard to believe
The court mechanic itself is good.
The problems are
- The amount of random courtiers you get with some styles of gameplay is far too high, especially if you play small tribals without much raiding options and you need every single goldcoin and prestige is *important*. This wouldn't be a problem if throwing them out would not cost you significant amounts of ressources. It would also be less of a problem if every new potential courtier would first ask if he may join. When my court is full, why the heck should i invite my former enemy with all of his court and concubines and everyone and his cow to live in my court? That doesnt make sense!
- Children count towards the court maximum but you cannot get rid of them. Well you can actually, but that involves murder, which in turn isn't that reliable. And i think there should be some option to prevent your treasury to be drained by your enemies children than to murder them all.
- Sometimes courtiers you threw out just crawl back a few days later and i cannot stop them. That's not how you do "leave and don't come back"! I don't even know who would do this, so i sacrifice ever more costly prestige that i could've used to upgrade my realm.
- While for rich empires the cost of having too many courtiers isn't that much, for a tribal duke its crippling. Either the cost has to be lower, or the court has to be even more manageable without draining all your ressources. At the moment i cannot afford to kick out courtiers, while i also go into negative income just because of the courtiers. That feels stupid!
The problems are
- The amount of random courtiers you get with some styles of gameplay is far too high, especially if you play small tribals without much raiding options and you need every single goldcoin and prestige is *important*. This wouldn't be a problem if throwing them out would not cost you significant amounts of ressources. It would also be less of a problem if every new potential courtier would first ask if he may join. When my court is full, why the heck should i invite my former enemy with all of his court and concubines and everyone and his cow to live in my court? That doesnt make sense!
- Children count towards the court maximum but you cannot get rid of them. Well you can actually, but that involves murder, which in turn isn't that reliable. And i think there should be some option to prevent your treasury to be drained by your enemies children than to murder them all.
- Sometimes courtiers you threw out just crawl back a few days later and i cannot stop them. That's not how you do "leave and don't come back"! I don't even know who would do this, so i sacrifice ever more costly prestige that i could've used to upgrade my realm.
- While for rich empires the cost of having too many courtiers isn't that much, for a tribal duke its crippling. Either the cost has to be lower, or the court has to be even more manageable without draining all your ressources. At the moment i cannot afford to kick out courtiers, while i also go into negative income just because of the courtiers. That feels stupid!
Even in Imperator: Rome, the "empty" game, you are allowed to pass judgement on the important families of your conquered foes. 
"Ask vassals to help with titles" mk2
Doesn't that make the steward take the title himself?
Pretty much this. Also, it's really odd when it says that I barely know the face of my heir and my best councilors.
I think that it works great. The only that should be in is an easy way to manage your court, like the prisoner tab and the plot tab, showing you those whom you can oust from your court and a button to expel many at once, if they don't hold any minor title or government position though.
Children and Prisoner should count. We just have to stop playing as before, cause it was unrealistic and gamey and mostly unfun, simple. Now you must choose your court wisely and not just spam courtiers to have an uber court and hold prisoners for life not dealing with them. Now you may even start thinking sending some of your children abroad, be tutored to other courts, and other things like that.
Children and Prisoner should count. We just have to stop playing as before, cause it was unrealistic and gamey and mostly unfun, simple. Now you must choose your court wisely and not just spam courtiers to have an uber court and hold prisoners for life not dealing with them. Now you may even start thinking sending some of your children abroad, be tutored to other courts, and other things like that.
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The cost in gold and bonus in prestige is nice, I suppose. But as others have said I have yet to click the expel courtiers button because I am afraid it will get rid of good characters and leave useless ones. Honestly what court management really would benefit from is simply a modern UI with bigger (or resizable) windows. I wouldn't mind CKII being so very click-heavy if I could at least see at a glance who is in my court (or any other list of characters). An even more helpful (but also less likely) improvement to court management and QoL would be a more powerful search tool that corrects for misspellings, has more filters, etc.
The mechanic, at least from what I've read in the dev diary, seems bad.
In past campaigns I've played, my court would balloon quickly with my aggressive playstyle. I'd often have dozens of useless gumbos that sit around worthlessly until they got cancer at the ripe old age of 27. Previously, this phenomenon was benign. All these extra characters were useless, but at least they caused no harm. Now though, the devs want me to pay a micromanagement tax for this process by expelling these idiots one by one, or suffer penalties. Why? What does this penalty serve? CK2 is already the worst Paradox game in terms of meaningless micromanagement, and this "feature" will only exacerbate the issue.
Can somebody please give a coherent reason why this feature is good?
In past campaigns I've played, my court would balloon quickly with my aggressive playstyle. I'd often have dozens of useless gumbos that sit around worthlessly until they got cancer at the ripe old age of 27. Previously, this phenomenon was benign. All these extra characters were useless, but at least they caused no harm. Now though, the devs want me to pay a micromanagement tax for this process by expelling these idiots one by one, or suffer penalties. Why? What does this penalty serve? CK2 is already the worst Paradox game in terms of meaningless micromanagement, and this "feature" will only exacerbate the issue.
Can somebody please give a coherent reason why this feature is good?
I think a decision in the intrigue panel to "close" the court, rendering it invite only, would solve most of these problems. No more randoms cropping up in your court because of your conquests. The AI could implement this too when they reach their court limit, opening up again only once it is 50% of it's court limit.
Unless you are a tribe the cost seems pretty meaningless to be over cap. In fact as a west african pagan in the 8th century as soon as I had 3 trade posts I actually wanted to be over my limit because the prestige was more valuable.
I do agree that it should be simpler to kick people out and stop them from returning.
I do agree that it should be simpler to kick people out and stop them from returning.
Because they aren't going to change that and they shouldn't. Some of us like to tutor those kids. And for those of you that don't, you can give someone the court tutor title and that person will raise the children. You also have the game rule to limit child notifications.
OMG ARE YOU SERIOUS that is the best news I've heard all day.
It's a very strange mechanics for me since I play as a little King in Ireland which has a limit of 20 courtiers. All of my default (around 10 people) courtiers are worthless so I should suffer with them OR get some foreigners which are too often come with families so since I need 5 good counselors it's easy to understand my inconvenience because at best my court will be 15 (if counselors are singles) from early game OR 20 (if counselors have wives) OR 25+ (if counselors have children). And why should I pay for extra courtiers or deportation with my money? It has no sense especially in tribes.
I'm surprised to read that a lot of people used to have a lot of characters in their court, and that 50 isn't a huge number. Even when you couldn't ask courtiers to leave, maintaining only needed characters in my court was one of my priority. I cannot play without knowing who is who, and above 20 characters this is too much work. I only keep in my court my wife, my children who aren't adults yet and my heir (+ wife and children), and my councilors. I often have a ~15 characters courts. The "Ask courtier to leave", as incomplete as it is, was a great gift for me, and I can't understand why this kind of thing isn't in the game since the beggining. You make an option to invite people, you also make an option to make them leave.
This is why I'm unsatisfied with this update in general. Only unsatisfied, because I always used to play the court game the way dev seem to want us to play so it doesn't change anything for me, and I knew that absolutely NOTHING would be done to problematic mechanics involving characters at your court. I even think that removing prisoners from the court is annoying, as I can't as much easily as before know when I have someone unexpected in jail.
I can't even imagine why dev made it impossible to make children leave your court. I mean, ok I gave lands to a man, so he swore fealty etc., so I understand that this is normal that if he died, I take care of his family. But wow, look, I'm an asshole, and now that everyone saw me protecting wife & children, I don't want them in my court so the mother will be asked to leave, and children murdered. First of all, you should not have a prestige hit when asking a courtier to leave, but a piety hit or opinion hit with more characters according to your situation.
Asking the King's brother to leave your court while he is universally loved should be prejudicable for your prestige and and you should get opinion penalty with close kins. Asking a random unlanded character with no family should be unconsequential. Get an unimportant child out of your court should get you piety penalty etc.
Also, I find it truly infuriating that with this new mechanic, and KNOWING that many situations can get you dozens of (obviously unwanted) courtiers, devs didn't even bother to make the shortcut to confirm you want a person to leave to work. Oh, so you have annihilated this huge empire, and now you have 300 courtiers at your court ? Yeah, sorry bro, you'll have to click 3 times for each character, there's no shortcut, and of course you'll need to kill children if you don't want to have a hundred totaly useless courtiers at your court. P.S : I made it so that you now lose gold for this, have fun bro.
IMO, dev took an aspect that needed huge improvements, considered as problems things that were not, and just gave us an update that solves nothing of the real problems, just adding a tiny lil' bit of realism in a mechanic that looks like it was never intended to be realistic.
The filters in prisoners management should totally have been a thing in courtiers management. There is way too much micro management in the game (and for most things, it's long and annoying, adding nothing but boringness in tasks that are already boring though necessary)
Thanks anyway for the free update, that has some pretty cool features
EDIT : Anytime I mention "ask courtier to leave", I'm not talking about the ineffective new decision, but the option in diplomacy menu. Seriously, the decision to being helped giving titles is terrible, and if I got to accept this could-be-awesome-but-no decision will stay forever annoying & ineffective, I thought devs wouldn't make twice the mistake. Naive me.
This is why I'm unsatisfied with this update in general. Only unsatisfied, because I always used to play the court game the way dev seem to want us to play so it doesn't change anything for me, and I knew that absolutely NOTHING would be done to problematic mechanics involving characters at your court. I even think that removing prisoners from the court is annoying, as I can't as much easily as before know when I have someone unexpected in jail.
I can't even imagine why dev made it impossible to make children leave your court. I mean, ok I gave lands to a man, so he swore fealty etc., so I understand that this is normal that if he died, I take care of his family. But wow, look, I'm an asshole, and now that everyone saw me protecting wife & children, I don't want them in my court so the mother will be asked to leave, and children murdered. First of all, you should not have a prestige hit when asking a courtier to leave, but a piety hit or opinion hit with more characters according to your situation.
Asking the King's brother to leave your court while he is universally loved should be prejudicable for your prestige and and you should get opinion penalty with close kins. Asking a random unlanded character with no family should be unconsequential. Get an unimportant child out of your court should get you piety penalty etc.
Also, I find it truly infuriating that with this new mechanic, and KNOWING that many situations can get you dozens of (obviously unwanted) courtiers, devs didn't even bother to make the shortcut to confirm you want a person to leave to work. Oh, so you have annihilated this huge empire, and now you have 300 courtiers at your court ? Yeah, sorry bro, you'll have to click 3 times for each character, there's no shortcut, and of course you'll need to kill children if you don't want to have a hundred totaly useless courtiers at your court. P.S : I made it so that you now lose gold for this, have fun bro.
IMO, dev took an aspect that needed huge improvements, considered as problems things that were not, and just gave us an update that solves nothing of the real problems, just adding a tiny lil' bit of realism in a mechanic that looks like it was never intended to be realistic.
The filters in prisoners management should totally have been a thing in courtiers management. There is way too much micro management in the game (and for most things, it's long and annoying, adding nothing but boringness in tasks that are already boring though necessary)
Thanks anyway for the free update, that has some pretty cool features
EDIT : Anytime I mention "ask courtier to leave", I'm not talking about the ineffective new decision, but the option in diplomacy menu. Seriously, the decision to being helped giving titles is terrible, and if I got to accept this could-be-awesome-but-no decision will stay forever annoying & ineffective, I thought devs wouldn't make twice the mistake. Naive me.
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I said since the beginning that this was a bad idea and I'm unimpressed to be right. The court limit is ridiculously small.
I like the fact that going over the limit incurs a penalty to income rather than tax or stats. It's a legitimate calculation to make, and the cost is annoying rather than crippling. Well done there.
I do not like the fact that children count against the limit. I think the single-biggest change that is needed is to not count any children against the limit, Not a discount, but a complete zero until they turn 16 (and you can thus kick them out, marry them off, whatever).
So I think it's an intriguing start, but they need to deal with kids.
I do not like the fact that children count against the limit. I think the single-biggest change that is needed is to not count any children against the limit, Not a discount, but a complete zero until they turn 16 (and you can thus kick them out, marry them off, whatever).
So I think it's an intriguing start, but they need to deal with kids.
As Basil the Macedonian my current cap is 68 and by Court isn't even half that yet. In gneral I'd much rather eat a gold penalty than a fertility penalty anyway - especially as I try to avoid landing my children.
its good, but the base values are way too low. King rank should at the least be 30 minimum before costs. 40 Actually. What we need is a way to organize our characters of important lists. Better courtier tracking should be a given with this patch
No, you can't just appoint a court tutor and then they'll automatically tutor children who are imprisoned. Even with court tutor, the ruler is the default tutor of children held in prison, which is stupid. Mechanically, it's not really that bad, because you can manually appoint someone else as the guardian to each imprisoned child, but it's a stupid default.
Anyway, I don't see the point of the new court limit mechanic. The implementation sucks, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with the concept, IMO there was no need for it to be introduced, either.
I have a cap of around 76 right now, and I'm just below it. I have a lot of bloodline mixing going on so once that's done I can jettison some of these people.