Will the new travel system allow us to stay in multiple "Capitals"?

[greywulfos]

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. I think it's really bizarre that in this game you can currently hold land on either side of a literal sea and not have to move regularly between different power bases on either side.

For instance, say I'm William of Normandy - will I be able to move to England to deal with problems up in England, then stay in London for a while, before moving back down to Normandy when problems arise there? This kind of system could allow for making loose personal unions feel a lot more like a loose personal union instead of any addition to your empire being the same, be it on the other side of a mountain range or not.

It would be a shame to add the notion of a character's position on the map into the game and then have all plotted courses eventually return to the same place.

 

[Meka66]

Are you able to say if the Travel system has been tied into any previous DLC mechanics? I know holding court on tour would be a big ask, but I think it would be cool if during a tour around Iberia, different types of visits and intents would influence the progress of the struggle in different ways. Like an altruism intent would influence the struggle towards conciliation, and a justice intent towards hostility.

For Tours, older systems have been affected here and there where it seemed to make sense.

For Travel, you travel around to get to Feasts, Hunts, but probably one of the older systems that uses travel the most is, of course, Pilgrimages.

 

[Ixal]

Well as you want to talk about travel, will the travel system be able to handle dynamic targets?

For examples you travel to seduce someone (assuming that starting a seduction scheme will start a travel as it was mentioned that you need to be in the same location to seduce) and that person moves while you are travelling, what happens?

 

[davidproxy]

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. I think it's really bizarre that in this game you can currently hold land on either side of a literal sea and not have to move regularly between different power bases on either side.

For instance, say I'm William of Normandy - will I be able to move to England to deal with problems up in England, then stay in London for a while, before moving back down to Normandy when problems arise there? This kind of system could allow for making loose personal unions feel a lot more like a loose personal union instead of any addition to your empire being the same, be it on the other side of a mountain range or not.

It would be a shame to add the notion of a character's position on the map into the game and then have all plotted courses eventually return to the same place.

This is a very interesting idea. On top of having a temporary capital (provisional capital maybe but I think that is already a taken term), I am imagining a ruler's traits and skills having an influence on the map sort of in the same way that your council does. For example, Lord Hartmannus has recently conquered a stretch of land near the godless frontier of the Carpathian mountain range. He is a hard worker but very passionate - quick to make a friend but quick to anger (diligent, gregarious, and wrathful). But his new demesne is in chaos. Former soldiers turned to banditry wander the land attacking traders, pagans conspire against good Christians and worst of all, taxes aren't being paid to him. Hartmannus decides the best thing to do is to set up a provisional capital in the largest city in this new area. Leaving his own capital in the trusty hands of his regent, he travels to his new, temporary capital of...well he can't pronounce it but it sounds something like Misthaufen. Misthaufen gets the provisional capital modifier which increases control, taxes, and (depending on whether Hartmannus is cynical or not) a slow, passive conversion of religion if applicable for that specific county and would radiate outwards to surrounding counties with much lesser effects. This is to show that the character has arrived with their retinue of taxmen, guards, and other court servants as they try and exert order on the new lands. Now, the chaos of the lands, the differing culture and religion might cause the positive modifiers to be negated, but it shows that they're trying to make a change.

Hartmannus is a fairly good administrator (good stewardship), very good commander (excellent martial), and a decent negotiator (medium diplomacy). Because of these skills and his innate traits, when Hartmannus arrives at his new base of operations, the county gets more bonuses to control and tax efficiency to show that he has begun to directly administrate this new realm. This would take some time (at least a month if not more) to take effect because things generally don't happen overnight unless you have some amazing skills. Finally, on top of everything else going for him, Hartmannus has a fearsome reputation having executed a bunch of captured nobles that fought against him in the earlier war. The locals have heard this and it causes recidivism to drop although the locals opinion of Hartmannus drops with it (is it better to be loved or feared?). This is shown in game by increasing control even more and applying a negative popular opinion that, once again, is strongest in the location that the character resides (Misthaufen) and extends outwards.

A tldr of this is that I think it would be neat if characters could move capital (like you suggest) but also that their personalities and skills influence control and popular opinion of the surrounding area and that they run into events sort of like our councilors do where they are trying to put down guerilla hold-outs after a failed peasant rebellion or having trouble collecting taxes from barons (since we can't do tours for them I figured they could be handled by simple events).

Edit: I also think it is important to note that a character's presence wouldn't always be a good thing. If they have low skills, if they are debauched, if they are lazy or insane, their being in an area might incite a peasant or noble rebellion; or both!

 

[Pendables]

Having a realm divided by sea doesn't even affect how you fight wars, we are a long ways off from it affecting how you govern

 

[davidproxy]

Having a realm divided by sea doesn't even affect how you fight wars, we are a long ways off from it affecting how you govern

Definitely, but I always find that its fun to dream about new and interesting systems.

Edit: Also I have nothing better to do at work unless something breaks.

 

[_Sphere_]

Correct me if I'm wrong but both states generally worked in an opposite manner to what you're describing here. In other discussions I've seen it noted that Emperors rarely left the capital if not on campaign and Caliphs with functional governments generally had their vassals come to them rather than the other way around. This is indeed what allowed state capture by unlanded bureaucrats/soldiers/courtiers but travelling wouldn't have fixed the problem because leaving the capital to go visit a vassal in Syria would leave everyone back in court time to plot among themselves

Forcing vassals to travel to/stay at the capital could be an interesting mirror for Feudal tours and would help to differentiate bureaucratic governments from feudatory ones though

Yeah, especially in the Byzantine Empire during certain eras it was not uncommon for Emperors and even major Byzantine nobles to never leave Constantinople. There's one report of a Byzantine noble out on campaign, taking time to ride over to see his estate in Anatolia. A place he had never seen before.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

Yeah, especially in the Byzantine Empire during certain eras it was not uncommon for Emperors and even major Byzantine nobles to never leave Constantinople. There's one report of a Byzantine noble out on campaign, taking time to ride over to see his estate in Anatolia. A place he had never seen before.

The problem I think is the game does a blanked application of the same feudalism everywhere. I am not sure to what extent future content or mods could more accurately represent this. If all of the most important nobles are right next door, there is no need to personally visit the corners of your realm. Caliphs were pretty lazy and rarely left the comfort and pleasures of the capital. This attitude definitely weakened the authority of the caliph.

 

[ramius3443]

I imagine that dual capitals would be too tricky development wise to implement, but perhaps a simpler way to get close to the effect is to just allow more frequent capital moves (something Meka mentioned), perhaps dependent on how many kingdom titles you hold? Maybe some sort of distance/sea tile based calc?

Since I assume its cheaper to travel to vassals for activities if they happen to be closer (someone may correct me on that if im wrong), one could also forgo any additional scripted benefit from doing so (to counties/relational bonus to local vassals) since there would already be a baked in, intuitive advantage to the capital proximity via cheaper, quicker trips to placate the locals.

Move capital, arrange for quick/cheap tour of the local realm, move back.
Simple, but captures the intended dynamic.

As of this morning, I've actually changed Tours so now if you fail to complete a Tour every five years, your entire dynasty is killed and your PC crashes. Hope this helps!

Let no one say the devs dont listen to community feedback!

 

[FishieFan]

I kind of get it, but at the same time do we really want devs to have to watch what they say at all times to avoid upsetting someone that might not be 100% happy?

When you're the face of the company you get given lectures about being the face of the company

I'm not even sure what @Ixal wants from the devs, because what I've seen this week is that they are rebalancing vassal opinions to be less overwhelmingly positive.

Yesterday they gave us a dev diary showing vassals were being reworked, the thread complaining about tours being useless was when all we had to go on for tours was a few screenshots showing minor buffs and no indication they were necessary as many had hoped. Its a bit hard to know the future so perhaps it mightve been better marketing sense to lead with the changes everyone gets, then unveiling the seminal parts of the dlc, but ck3 takes a very different approach to dev diaries than other paradox games for some reason

They way they've described Tours are as another option to help deal with internal strife, and it seems to be way more integrated and fleshed out than Royal Court.

It can be better than royal court but bad on the whole because of just how poorly integrated royal court was

To me it just seems like people upset about the pace of development venting those frustrations on any content that gets announced, regardless of how much it looks like the devs are trying to incorporate feedback from previous DLCs.

We'll have to wait for the pachnotes & release to see how much feedback has been implemented

 

[grommile]

When you're the face of the company you get given lectures about being the face of the company

Who do you want talking to you? Devs, or PR flacks?

 

[_Sphere_]

The problem I think is the game does a blanked application of the same feudalism everywhere. I am not sure to what extent future content or mods could more accurately represent this. If all of the most important nobles are right next door, there is no need to personally visit the corners of your realm. Caliphs were pretty lazy and rarely left the comfort and pleasures of the capital. This attitude definitely weakened the authority of the caliph.

Yeah, I don't envy the dev's. Representing something like the Byzantine Empire is hard because it was so ... Byzantine. Likewise with the Caliphate, the Papacy the nomadic step tribes etc.. We like to neatly lump this whole era into "feudalism", but governing structures were varied, complex and evolved over time.

 

[FishieFan]

Yeah, especially in the Byzantine Empire during certain eras it was not uncommon for Emperors and even major Byzantine nobles to never leave Constantinople. There's one report of a Byzantine noble out on campaign, taking time to ride over to see his estate in Anatolia. A place he had never seen before.

Byz was centralised enough that it worked. The caliphate on the other hand wasn't

 

[pengoyo]

I imagine that dual capitals would be too tricky development wise to implement, but perhaps a simpler way to get close to the effect is to just allow more frequent capital moves (something Meka mentioned), perhaps dependent on how many kingdom titles you hold? Maybe some sort of distance/sea tile based calc?

You can move your capital as many and as often as you want as long as you control the de jure capital for two or more titles that are all tied for your highest level title. Requires flip-flop which is your primary title because, as long as you aren't at war, you can always move your capital to your primary titles de jure capital. Though this won't help OP with their example. But can be used to RP as the ruler of two kingdoms with two capitals.

Edit: word

 

[WARenie]

I really like the idea of designating which holding/region your character is focusing on and moving there to solve local problems while your governors rule over the remaining ones, like in Imperator: Rome. Could be useful for representation of not feudal realms as well.

 

[Cooleatack]

As of this morning, I've actually changed Tours so now if you fail to complete a Tour every five years, your entire dynasty is killed and your PC crashes. Hope this helps!

Okay, I think this is a hilarious clapback, and the person you replied it to should have dialed it back a bit, but could you please take the underlying concern seriously? Without repeating myself too much: I can only commend you and the team for the tour idea, but you can take the function a whole lot further than just giving a bonus and events.

 

[Cooleatack]

I would like to echo my idea in the dev diary thread for this:

A main reason for wanting high domain limit is to grab those juicy special buildings. Since you’re adding in even more (and great normal building locations), but decreasing domain limit, it becomes even more enticing to split up your realm into these arguably much better buildings. I think it breaks immersion to have you splinter your direct domain away from your capital as much. It makes capital location also trivial, outside of role play.

I would completely alleviate this by giving the top liege of a special building (part of) the benefit of the special building, while giving the direct holder a smaller version of the benefit for himself (balanced for renown, and other parts where needed).

This way, you can focus on building up you capital area, without having to splinter yourself to get those bonuses. “After all, Count Whatshisname might maintain the special church, but its in my realm, and I’m the emperor damnit” It would also make it less painful to have a vassal have this land, and incentivize keeping it their own culture etc.

I think it makes for more cohesive states if you make it less needed to beeline for special buildings, and split up your capital. If one does have land on, say the other side of a strait, then tours and holding court would be a good way to emulate having to move your court over from the different areas.

Edit: split comment, as they were two different ideas.

 

[Cooleatack]

I almost typed ‘yourt’, which made me think of a yurt court. So, that gave me an insight: I think the perfect time for the dev team to revamp capitals and itinerant courts even more, is when they change up nomad style of play. This will probably require changing up base code for how that land is governed, and decoupling rule from direct land ownership.

That would be a perfect way to create mobile courts, that you can then station in your different physical capitals. Both for nomadic, and landed rulers in their own respective ways. Say: For nomads the itinerary court would be the standard, and moving to fixed capital location, the temporary situation. For landed rulers it would be the opposite: Having capitals as we have them now is the standard, and moving to a different location, the temporary.

All would use the travel baseline mechanic to determine location. Holding court and touring would have characters go to the location the court is in at that moment. This just spun out of my head, so I’d be happy to clarify anything that I wasn’t clear on!

Edit: This should be its own comment

 

[Spartakus]

Nah, not from you mate. You've been routinely coming into threads I'm in and just making snarky comments about the same thing over and over. This thread is not about your personal gripe about Tours, and I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about capitals, travel, and all that good stuff and I'd rather not have it derailed.

Most everyone else in the thread has had some nice constructive ideas, and I'm taking those seriously. If you ever have something of value to contribute to the conversation, I will address it, but until then, you snark and I'll snark back

Hope that clears everything up!

Would you kindly consider a non-snarky response to the concern raised here if someone else asked you to? Because you did basically shut down the other thread and asked us to trust in you doing the balancing right. Which is a a totally valid request except that said thread wasn't even concerned about balancing problems int he first place.
I would agree that this isn't the correct thread to talk about that concern but I'm also a bit lost where I should go otherwise.

 

[Meka66]

Would you kindly consider a non-snarky response to the concern raised here if someone else asked you to? Because you did basically shut down the other thread and asked us to trust in you doing the balancing right. Which is a a totally valid request except that said thread wasn't even concerned about balancing problems int he first place.
I would agree that this isn't the correct thread to talk about that concern but I'm also a bit lost where I should go otherwise.

The thread was titled "Tours are already confirmed as pointless" and the body of the thread was claiming that Tours are either one of two things; a waste of time which does not yield meaningful rewards (contrary to screenshots and statements provided in the dev diary), or a bonus farm which will render the game trivially easy.

The demands in the thread were to introduce something which made them "mandatory". But what is mandatory, exactly? As I stated in the thread, most game mechanics; existing activities, schemes, declaring war, etc. are not "mandatory". You are incentivized to do them based on whatever the game state is. Want someone dead? We have murder schemes for that. Need a boost in control, cultural acceptance, vassal management, and so on? We have Tours for that. It's a tool, same as any other in the game.

The suggestion that kept coming up in the thread was to make a negative modifier (either character or opinion) if you have not completed a Tour recently. This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons; it is an arbitrary punishment which forces the player into engaging in content they may not otherwise need, it makes Tours into a chore you must complete rather than a tool at your disposal, it runs counter to the central design philosophy of activities as a concept, it's boring, it's ahistoric (not every medieval ruler did Tour, and even then it wasn't expected necessarily), it does not introduce new challenges, it forces the player into playing a certain way rather than aligning with their interests. Would a negative character modifier for not completing murder schemes make murder schemes better or more interesting? I don't think so. Would it make sense? Also no.

I talked about balance because that seemed to be the central concern; that Tours would either be powerless or overpowered without an arbitrarily applied character modifier. So, I addressed that elsewhere in the title we intend to adjust numbers accordingly with new bonuses; subtler incentives throughout the title which would drive you to Tour. I couldn't get into specifics partly because there are many of them in small areas, and partly because they related to unannounced features like vassal stances.

My frustration with this topic stems from the fact that it has felt very conspiratorial surrounding my use of a single word, and it feels like this whole discussion would never have happened had I not used that word or addressed this thoroughly and early, but I had signed off believing that it would not have been misconstrued and conspiratorialised in this way.

Plus forum titles like that are just really shitty and hostile. I've just spent months working tirelessly on this feature just for a bunch of people to come out of the woodwork and start denouncing it as "confirmed to be pointless" merely because of one word I chose to use. It's felt like my follow-up comments and the body of the development diary itself including screenshots has been completely ignored due to this one word.

Hope that clarifies things and we can put this god forsaken topic to bed.

 

[Meka66]

When you're the face of the company you get given lectures about being the face of the company

I'm not the face of the company. I'm some guy. I volunteer my time. If you want me to continue volunteering my time, you have to act like someone I want to talk to.

This doesn't mean I'm unreceptive to negative feedback of course, but there are a number of ways to word negative feedback. Take this thread as an example, "Will the new travel system allow us to stay in multiple "Capitals"?" could have also been worded as "Why doesn't lazy stupid Paradox let us have multiple capitals?". One of them, I'd like to reply to, the other one I feel like probably it's written by some bitter troll who would be unreceptive to anything I could possibly say.

If you'd prefer, we can talk about revising this policy so you talk to community and social media experts if you want, but personally I'd rather continue with this informal thing we have going here that gives you a direct line with the developers.