What is in your wishlist for a next expansion in CK2?

[eduhum]

Given that it seems that development on the game most likely will still continue, what would you wish for the next DLC?

I'd personally wish a more fleshed out naval system, especially in the mediterranean, with naval battles, naval fleets of private citizens, mainly fishers and merchants, that can be requested by their lord to act as transport ships in a given moment, and later, when the game progresses towards the lower middle ages, you can begin to be able to build your own military fleet, just like what happens with retinues. I'd like to see how fleets of merchants in your kingdom/republic/whatever, the more they grow, the more wealth they generate, but also they harm in various ways the feudal system. I've been also wishing that, with the data of manpower and tax profits, there could be some sort of dynamic trade flow and trade gravity system, coupled with the merchant fleets.

What are the most popular requests? What do you personally want?

 

[elvain]

I am really surprised how 90% of the wishes here are very easily moddable content or pretty minor fixes, rather than DLC ideas for mechanics or tools to which the game could really expand.

fixing/adding cultures or de jure borders, kingdoms etc. is all great...
so maybe it could be packed together with some cultural enhancement content which could make playing various cultures feel little different?

 

[fr-rein]

some cultural enhancement content

Ideally, culture should be like religion.
Have a few perks - civilization (savage, nomad, civilized in one a few fashions - Byzantine, Middle East, Europe, China, India, etc), culture (language - is it oral or written, using Latin, Cyrrilic, Greek, hieroglyphs, Arabic, etc - and it allows to use these systems as kind of lingua franca, adding more content) plus few "national" perks - like we have some cultures raiding, having equality, etc. It allows to make some cultural splits actually a part of changing/"upgrading" culture.
The best part is about better stability after integrating other cultures in your group or having more problems from ruling more foreign/savage culture. It would also add quite a flavour for tribal governments.

As for generic requests - yeah, it is fixes and QoL, along with a more major cadet demand. But well, having this kind of content would be quite fun.

 

[SmashingQuasar]

Looking at this thread (and forum in general), plus the overall popularity of Holy Fury and the current state of the game, I'd say Paradox would be crazy to stop developing more content for CK2.
Fans want more and more stuff. There are ao many good ideas and so much creativity and desire from the fanbase. Not to mention very active modding community.
Really, ending CK2 would be a bad decision right now.

Well of course, there would be probably no benefit in a CKIII: Less content to play with, graphics don't matter this much in 4X and the current graphics of CKII are still perfectly fine for the goal of the game. It would also mean no export to EUIV which a lot of people enjoy and are asking for Imperator: Rome as well.

 

[sreckom92]

Well of course, there would be probably no benefit in a CKIII: Less content to play with, graphics don't matter this much in 4X and the current graphics of CKII are still perfectly fine for the goal of the game. It would also mean no export to EUIV which a lot of people enjoy and are asking for Imperator: Rome as well.

Newer Paradox games are naturally more advanced than CK2. Even EU4 is more advanced.
But I don't think the difference is that huge. Imperator looks fancier, and will certainly perform better, but it's still within the same generation.
EU3, HOI3 and Victoria 2 are one generation. CK2, EU4, HOI4, Stellaris and Imperator are another.
I don't want to see CK3 built in this current gen. I don't want it to be just a prettier and slightly more optimized version of CK2.
Once Paradox is ready to make a leap to a new generation, then they should talk about CK3.

 

[Ixal]

A new technology system which beter represents the importance of centers of learning, scholars and also able to represent events like the destruction of Baghdad.

 

[sreckom92]

A new technology system which beter represents the importance of centers of learning, scholars and also able to represent events like the destruction of Baghdad.

We could have the whole holding system overhauled, like it was done with planets in Stellaris.

On the other hand, better not...
People would seriously freak out.

 

[Ixal]

We could have the whole holding system overhauled, like it was done with planets in Stellaris.

On the other hand, better not...
People would seriously freak out.

I do not really see what is wrong with the holding system so I do not think it should be changed. Imo the technology system is much more worthy of a rework as it is rather bland, not character driven like most mechanics in CK2 and can't accuratly portrait several events in the timeline like the loss of Roman Technology or the sacking of Baghdad.

 

[Metz]

Cadet branches and dynasty feuds.

Complex plots that target multiple characters with a specific purpose that is attached to a dynamic mini-storyline.

Multiple cultures per province to show how migration works and also as a better way to represent Jews and German settlers.

 

[ExiledKing]

After a bit of cursory reading, I think that the government types (especially tribal/early feudal) need to be fleshed out a bit more. Apparently, the title of count didn't become inheritable in many places in western Europe until around the 10th century, and not until after the time-frame of game itself in eastern Europe, so I think that the option should exist for counties in those areas to revert back to the king/duke upon the death of the count, whether the count has a suitable heir or not. If not that, then at least allow for free revocation upon the succession of a new count. The early counts were apparently lieutenants of the actual nobility, not nobility in and of themselves, so a king or duke should be allowed free revocation without it leading to a negative opinion amongst the other vassals.

 

[Sparticulous]

Naval ware fare so the maritime republics of the Mediterranean can protect themselves from raiders of the Norse. And fight each other

 

[Mini Snuggle]

In terms of completely new features, better technology and Wonders appeal to me the most. Wonders could be something like building the Suez Canal or the palace at Versailles or the 3rd Temple (or 4th if you didn't like the first try). I wouldn't mind a better debt system. As it is now, if you're 100 gold in debt, you're going to get spammed with county penalties regardless of how high your income is. When I say spammed, I mean all of the penalties in all my demense in a month for a debt I could have paid off in a month and a half.

But the highest on my wishlist: expand focuses. Focuses are already a good mix of "lazy" focuses that you can select and forget (like Business or Scholarship) and focuses that are more active (like Intrigue and Carousing). But, some aren't reliable at giving you events, like the stewardship one, which is a problem. At the very least, you should be assured of a positive event every year. Some focuses/events won't trigger if you're a commander: That's no fun. The Carousing focus is absolutely useless when you're at war, which is frustrating with the 5 year switch restriction: Please remove this or give the carousing focus stuff to do while at war.

My suggestion would be to encourage 2 different playstyles. The first is what is there currently for some focuses: switch between focuses every 5 yearsish for permanent stat bonuses like Trader or Carouser or Schemer. The second would be to stay on a focus long term for more frequent events and special events. Ideally, a focus would have better events that only trigger when you've been on it for 5+, 10+, and 15+ years in your lifetime (non-consecutive should count too).

Other minor focus things: Change the god awful event from business focus that has you build a "Great Tower". That event is guaranteed to bankrupt every player who hasn't stockpiled gold for the last 20 years because of the income-scaling. Plus, building the quarry is NEVER EVER WORTH IT because -build cost doesn't mean crap when the quarry cost has scaled up over 2k. I'd rather have an event that let's me choose to build a castle/town/temple in (random demense county with a spare slot) for cheaper than usual, then side events that let the holding be built with various upgrades.

Minor: The final event for the Gardener line (from Business focus) gives a choice between getting the Gardener lifestyle trait or getting +1 stewardship (both options will give a +1 diplomacy bonus if you build statues of your family or religious figures from an earlier part of the chain). Choosing the trait is never worth it. You lose the Trader bonus (+2 stewardship) that most players will have/be able to get soon from the Business focus, so the only gain is +1 learning and +10 same trait opinion. Nobody will take that when the other option is +1 stewardship. And worse, getting a Lifestyle trait locks you out of getting other lifestyle traits or some of the focus events associated with getting them.

Minor: I hate memorization events like the War focus's War Games event. Nearly every other event in the game gives you a random chance at success or failure. "You've learned shit, +1 martial" is a much more interesting event than looking at your cheat sheet for the right answers in order to get +1 martial, and much more fair to people who haven't caught on to it not being random.

 

[TheDungen]

Muslim/middle eastern stuff

• Get rid of decadence, or at least rework it majorly
• Bloodlines for the sayyid dynasties, especially the ones descended from Ali and Fatima.
• rework shia uprising (shouldn't spawn random dynasties if there are shia or secret shia who are descended from Ali in existance).
• The Fatmids should be Secret Shia in the early start dates.
• break up the levantine culture into A syrian verison and a iraqi version.
• break up the tukish culture in turkish (the settled turks) and oghuz (the nomadic ones). The turkish should have settled holding art a metling pot for anatolia to flip turkish and probably not even be in the altaic culture group. Altaic characters ruling iranian or turkish lands flip turkish, Greek provinces in anatolia under turkish rule flip turkish.
• give the zoroastrians their own interface and COA shields instead of using the muslim ones.
• More mountains rivers and wastelands, the "duchy of arabia should pretty much just be wasteland with some kind of crossing point so you can get from palestine to arabia.
• A decision to settle the shia sunni schism, by for an example being a sunni caliph descended from Ali and Fatima.
• Muslims retains the ability to declare jihads on other's of their religious group but the AI count the weights for a kingdom as half of what it actually is are when determining target if the person they would declare on is also muslim.

Egypt stuff

• An Aegyptian version of the hellenic pantheon if you reform it as a coptic.
• If you are a Roman or byzantine emperor holding provinces in Egypt an event where a character appears and claims to be descended from Caesarion (the son of Cleopatra and Caesar)
• If you are an independent king or emperor but not roman or byzantine emperor, and of the byzantine culture group there's a an event where a character appears and claims to be descended from the Ptolmids.

Map Mechanics stuff

• Nile becomes navigable.
• all major rivers and lakes becomes real seazones with ports and so on. You can however not enter a river segment next to a hostile province when at war.
• the Niger becomes a major river.
• like rivers are currently all seazones become no name provinces that are then sorted into a region that is named.
• like rivers are currently all wastelands are broken up into no name provinces that are then sorted into the named wasteland. Wastelands can be entered but have really bad supply limit.
• mountain passes get a mauls to attacking through them same as river crossings, this malus is the same one as attacking into mountains and if the province is also mountainous it does not stack. (essentially when moving through a mountain pass the province on the other side is always treated as mountains regardless of what terrain it actually has).

Interface Stuff

• Viceroyalities gets a screen like the bishops one where you can appoint a successor or simply let the title pass to the next person in line. They will only revert to you if you chose yourself as the successor.
• You can open the declare war screen even when you have raised levies so you can see what CBs are available to you without having to disband levies to do so.

Ethiopia stuff

• If there are no descendants of Solomon left a cadet branch with blood of Solomon may appear in Ethiopia and demand to be landed.
• Map gets expanded a bit further south down to the northernmost part of the swahili coast.
• The indian ocean trade network gets redesigned entirely (along possibly with the way the silkroad functions when passing over sea titles).

China stuff

• The emperor should appreciate immortal courtiers sent to him.

Bloodlines stuff

• The immortal bloodline should fire a hidden event which at adulthood reduces you characters age by 10 but keeps displaying their old age in the interface (or rather displays their new age+10)
• The raiding bloodlines should permit raiding even if you otherwise wouldn't be able to.
• The Chinese royals should come with a dynasty specific bloodline.
• When writing a book of family history there should be the option of it being the biography of any founder of a bloodline you have, except if that founder is you.

Random Content

• There should be an option when writing a Magnum Opus to write about your lifestyle trait, that is if you life style trait is not already one of the ones linked to the existing options (Mystic Scholar and Theologian).
• Orthodox and Miaphysite should be able to contribute to and even join crusades if the target of the crusade is not christian. They should count as acceptable recipients of titles they have claims on, but any beneficiaries of theirs will have to be catholic, they cannot take titles for themselves.
• When defending in a religious war against someone of another religious group other members of your religious group can join you not just members of your religion.
• Non Christians can join jihads/great holy wars of their religious group, if the primary target is not of their religious group, but cannot be given land as a result.
• National saint, the saint with the highest score at death of a certain culture is considered the national saint of that culture and gets added to the "god" names of Christians of that culture.
• There is a Karling emperor of the HRE in the 867 start the other Karling realms are his vassals.
• The Trait Erudite gives an additional book slot for your character.

Fixes

• The AI should never send their family of to china if their dynasty has less then 5 members.
• A hero of the wrong religion should not be able to be the leader of a warrior lodge if there are remaining heroes of that religion.
• When going on adventures the weapons given to a character must be something he can use, giving The Axe of Perunas or Mjolnir to someone who's not the correct religion is very odd.
• Fat and malnourished become rarer, seriously I get they wanted to show them of but these days it's hard to find a character who's not one of these traits.

 

[TheDungen]

A complete reworking of the games economy system would be cool too.

A total rework of how holdings work would be nice. Especially if holdings become more unique and characterful.

Better inventory interface.
Option to change color of custom Kingdoms end Empires.

Very much this. Also for any title you own you should be able to right click it's COA and select set Primary COA, making the COA of your primary title to that COA. The AI would obviously not use it.

Don’t know about the other ideas, but German culture is definitely too much of a blob.

Yeah I can second that, the rhineland germans and dutch should be merged to a rhenish culture north germans should become saxons and south germans bavarian.

I am really surprised how 90% of the wishes here are very easily moddable content or pretty minor fixes, rather than DLC ideas for mechanics or tools to which the game could really expand.

fixing/adding cultures or de jure borders, kingdoms etc. is all great...
so maybe it could be packed together with some cultural enhancement content which could make playing various cultures feel little different?

A large reason for this is that most of us suggest the things we have already modded in ourselves and feel works very well.
Also looking as Eu4 makes me kind of wary of asking for mechanics because that game was totally destroyed by mechanics bloat.

 

[elvain]

A large reason for this is that most of us suggest the things we have already modded in ourselves and feel works very well.
Also looking as Eu4 makes me kind of wary of asking for mechanics because that game was totally destroyed by mechanics bloat.

Yup, I can understand that many people, especially modders like if their ideas etc. get incorporated. OTOH from DLCs and devs in general I was expecting to do stuff which we would like to add/change, but we can't, that was my point.

I can't really comment on EU4 since I don't play it often, but speaking of CK2 and adding mechanics, I think that the team behind the latest DLCs has shown that they can do pretty well in adding very sensitive and effective mechanics or flavour which goes beyond modding possibilities.

But neverming, it was just a side comment. I always liked these suggestion threads for the flood of inspiring ideas and was a little disappointed here. OTOH, even this thread still offers some good inspiration, so I shouldn't be expecting and asking too much

 

[Arona]

Tiered artifacts conditions.
I think it would work with books and also with swords. Where there is multible conditions to get accsess to artifact qualitys. Like you have a sword, for having that you get some prestige, if you have like 8 martial you can wear it and get some bonuses and if you have 20 martial you can master it and get more bonuses., ALso with books you have nice books you get prestige or piety depending on it but you need certain conditions to undrestand it and get full bonuses. SO no artifacts shoulnt be totaly usless even foreign religion artifacts.

 

[TheDungen]

Tiered artifacts conditions.
I think it would work with books and also with swords. Where there is multible conditions to get accsess to artifact qualitys. Like you have a sword, for having that you get some prestige, if you have like 8 martial you can wear it and get some bonuses and if you have 20 martial you can master it and get more bonuses., ALso with books you have nice books you get prestige or piety depending on it but you need certain conditions to undrestand it and get full bonuses. SO no artifacts shoulnt be totaly usless even foreign religion artifacts.

Not tiered just triggered. Artifacts have one trigger today they should have the ability to have multiple triggers and even hidden ones. The Axe of Perun is an axe in anyone's hands but it only hold a religious significance in the hands on a slavic pagan.
Also certain artifacts could be used for people of the wrong religion if they have sympathy for the right one but trigger a piety drain.

 

[Blinckx]

Implement a new system of terror and tyranny.
When you are a tyrant everyone should hate you but also fear you, no one should be able to create a public faction ( they are allowed to create secret and hidden faction more or less how secret society work ), when a peasant revolt fire up and your tyrant win the war, the leader of the revolt can be executed for some bonus/malus ( lower revolt risk but less income ). A weak vassal in the council should be afraid to vote against the evil big bag emperor ( but at the same time can plot in secret with other traitors to end his reign of terror ). This allow a more deep intrigue system, hidden faction, more option for your spy master and more

Kingdom Rivalry
Not only kings can be rival but also entire kingdom and this rival last for centuries no matter who's in charge. This also add a more strategical value to marriage between rival kingdoms, more options and bonus/malus.

Political Hostages
When you win ( or lose ) a war, some of your dynasty member can be used as hostage in the other country

More diplomatic options
Add Satanist bloodline
Marriage low-born wife should not only give you a prestige penalty but also should have consequences in the reign stability, dynasty opinion. If your heir want to marry someone else than the ugly stupid wife you choose for him because he's a romantic and want marry only for love well..do it but you the loose your title, your rank