CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

[aantia]

What I've always wanted was a way to see more than the first three heirs to a title. If my wife is 32nd in line to the throne of France, I want to be able to see that. A related improvement would be links to the heirs from a title's page; sometimes you get multiple people with the same name, so you don't know who to assassinate.
As always, thanks for the dev diary (and the game)

 

[Jorlem]

A nice role playing touch that I'd like to have would be to have the game indicate how I am related to kinsmen. If I hover over one of the distant kin blood drops, I'd like to see something like "Third Cousin" in the tooltip. Additionally, in the dynasty view, a way to automatically trace the path from a character to your character.

 

[Sir Tornado]

With regards to usability, there is some improvement required in Patrician election screen mode. It currently supports only 5 families although more can be formed, in which case the screen breaks.

 

[inhyeo3]

Would it be possible to implement a 'pillage all eligible holdings' decision for nomads? I love the unique play style nomads get, but I can't stomach 2 clicks per holding when I have about a hundred of them to level to the ground. My last couple of nomad playthroughs have been abandoned because of this. CK2 has never been kind to my mouse hand, but I genuinely have to get myself a hot compress after playing nomads.

Speaking of nomads, I end up holding an obscene number of counties, but when giving away titles the scroll window is tiny and fits only a few at a time. I wish it could accommodate more. Alternatively, giving out titles from the county interface would be amazing and something I've wanted for ages.

If possible, I'd love to have a keyboard shortcut for accepting events with only one outcome (one button to click/acknowledge). New events are being added with every expansion, and while I love that, I would like to be able to sift through them faster when they pop up in quick succession.

Lastly, more plagues! I'd like to have the option in the game rules to have at least one every century.

 

[Kljunas]

I agree. Tribals at least have the ability to build settlements to spread culture, but other than that there's really no active mechanic to increase culture for other government forms. In fact I was thinking about this last night while I was playing and hit upon an idea. What about an option for feudal governments to enact jus primae noctis in territories? The idea of course would be to breed out the foreign culture ala BRAVEHEART (yes, I know there is very little evidence to suggest that this law was ever actually practiced, but this is CK2 where lots of ahistorical things happen). The way this would affect the game is culture conversion rate controlled by a lord of your own culture would accelerate in exchange of a tradeoff of increased rebellion risk. Also, it could result in occasional unexpected claimants to a title when the son of the lowly peasant woman the feudal lord manage to knock up on her "first night" comes of age.

Culture spreads crazy fast already as long as the provinces are of your religion.

And I don't see how prima noctis would affect culture anyway. If I'm a Greek lord and I go bang some Serbian peasants then go away, their offspring is still going to be culturally Serbian, they're not magically going to start speaking Greek and eating feta.

 

[Keizer Harm]

I wish there was a way to convert culture but keep ethnicity. If I am France and conquer Mauretania, it only makes sense that they would start speaking French and eating (a local variant of) baguette after a while, but their skins shouldn't be getting lighter.

 

[GregoryK64]

One reason I down-voted is that you take a, lets say, very genetic view on culture spread. You could do an event chain with your 'jus primae noctis' though:

'One month after you've had your way with the newlywed peasant woman, a broad-shouldered man in ragged clothes jumps from his hiding place in an alcove, just as you where preparing to withdraw for the night. "I am Melvin, son of Gib', he yells. -'I have come to have my vengeance!" He strikes a blow with his heavy axe. As you collapse on the floor, the expensive carpet turns a more sinister, crimson hue.'​

Thanks for the input and I don't mind the down vote. It was simply one idea to give government systems other than tribal a culture conversion boost. And the event chain that you mention would be perfectly in line with that, as there would have to be some tradeoffs. That's why I mentioned revolt risks and the increased chance the occasional bastard showing up out of nowhere to press his claim.

Perhaps erecting certain buildings could be used to increase cultural output instead. It seems to me universities would be a perfect fit for this, and they are already in place. Just add a small culture modifier to the technology modifiers that are already in place.

 

[Titan79]

(I've already suggested this some two years ago but maybe now the time is ripe for implementing it)

I believe more or less every CK2 player has at least once run into the problem of not being able to remember anymore why did he/she mark some character as one of "special interest". The response from the player is to normally kill him/her and, while under most circumstances this was the real reason to mark the person, it might not always had been the case .

So, if this suggestion would be enabled, this problem would be gone forever. All it would take is to add a small new icon, clicking on which would open a standard text editor window where the player might then write down a few lines about the reasons which led to mark the character.

At that point, it would be enough to click on that scroll again to immediately remember that you actually didn't want to kill him/her, but just wanted to see if e.g. he managed to get a certain title...

Also, to prevent save game bloating, the notes could be limited to around 255 characters per person - and the notes themselves could get automatically deleted after that character's death.

How it might look in game:

 

[b_raven]

Also, i would like to see a reason (if there is one), when i imprison someone.

 

[Gans]

Also, i would like to see a reason (if there is one), when i imprison someone.

Hahaha yeah last time in one MP game: "Hey I can imprison you." "Yeah you are kinda backing my plot......"

 

[Eitre]

(I've already suggested this some two years ago but maybe now the time is ripe for implementing it)

I believe more or less every CK2 player has at least once run into the problem of not being able to remember anymore why did he/she mark some character as one of "special interest". The response from the player is to normally kill him/her and, while under most circumstances this was the real reason to mark the person, it might not always had been the case .

So, if this suggestion would be enabled, this problem would be gone forever. All it would take is to add a small new icon, clicking on which would open a standard text editor window where the player might then write down a few lines about the reasons which led to mark the character.

At that point, it would be enough to click on that scroll again to immediately remember that you actually didn't want to kill him/her, but just wanted to see if e.g. he managed to get a certain title...

Also, to prevent save game bloating, the notes could be limited to around 255 characters per person - and the notes themselves could get automatically deleted after that character's death.

I love how this opens up opportunities for the developers when you play a character with the lunatic trait...

 

[GregoryK64]

Culture spreads crazy fast already as long as the provinces are of your religion.

And I don't see how prima noctis would affect culture anyway. If I'm a Greek lord and I go bang some Serbian peasants then go away, their offspring is still going to be culturally Serbian, they're not magically going to start speaking Greek and eating feta.

Thanks. the prima noctis option was simply one idea and I appreciate the constructive criticism. I disagree that culture spreads quickly, however. With the Empire of Germania, I've held the kingdom of Austrasia now for over 150 years and all but maybe two of those counties still identify as French.I wouldn't call that "crazy fast". Getting Germans in as vassals is difficult unless I want to risk unjustified revocation wars, and even when I am able to educate French heirs to make them German they often quickly convert back to the local culture once they inherit.

 

[Relyson]

Probably been mentioned in this thread/many other threads already, but please an "Invite all Vassals to Carousing" button. Individually clicking 50+ vassals to invite them is worthy of smashing your face into the monitor.

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

Sorry if people have already said this, but oh well - here we go:

1. Add a intrigue decision "Invite All Vassals to Carousing" when you have the Carousing Focus. When you have a big *** realm, inviting one by one is a pain in the ***!
2. http://s11.postimg.org/kpxsud2r7/20160926152210_1.jpg - this confirmation pop-up for whoever accepts the invite or not is pretty unnecessary. How about changing it to a table telling you who accepted and who didn't, with an linkable name to the person's character window?

 

[Relyson]

Oh, I'd like to suggest another thing: to not dismiss mercenaries with your normal troops, in a way similar to Retinues. If I don't have loads of cash to hire then again, but enough to keep them around, I'd like to not accidentaly have them gone while I can attack someone else with the mercs around.

A good way to get around this is going into the levy page and clicking the dismiss hired troops.

 

[DeathWeasel]

I'm currently playing a Nomad game and handing out land becomes annoying very quickly. Having to scroll through a dozen pages of kingdoms, duchies, and provinces gets old very quickly.

It's nice that there is a button at the top of the screen that takes me to any holding I'm not currently pillaging, but what I'd really love is an option to pillage everything. Conquering a kingdom and having to manually click pillage on 200 or more holdings is frustrating in the extreme.

One more thing I'd like to see is an option to automatically educate wrong culture/religion characters in my realm. If you play as a vassal with a different culture than your liege and one of your children comes of age, your liege will send you a message about educating your child usually before you've even done it yourself. It's nice that an AI can educate everyone in his realm automatically, but I'd love the option to be able to do it as well for all of my vassals. I find it very sad that it is often easier to just revoke a hundred counts than it is to educate them properly. A player shouldn't be forced in to being a tyrant due to bad game mechanics.

 

[Idontlovevanilla]

Bugfix of truncated county names when? It happened in 2.6.1.1, but fix wasn't included in 2.6.2 and a bunch of guys like me are still waiting for this to be fixed some day. Just tell us when. One year? Maybe ten years?

 

[KamufN]

First of all, I'm really happy to see that you want to give more room for traits and modifiers.

Then to my suggestion:
The size of the UI is set to fit on smaller resolution. I fully understand the reason behind this, since it enables the game to be playable on most pc's. But for us who play on higher resolutions there is a lot of vertical room that can be used to increase the GUI size. This will make us able to see much more info on screen at one time, some of the scroll-lists (vassals etc.) can become looong with time. Especially the decision-list in the plots view needs more room. I mean with all decisions that have been added with the patches and expansions, only being able to view 4 decisions at once is just an irritation.
Just take a look at my mod as a proof of concept of sorts that there is much room for a "Bigger Interface"

CKII already changes the interface based on who you play (i.e. different bg based on religion, extra golden frames when republic or a different factions view for vassals than for top liege, with different list sizes.) so there should be possible to change the UI based on resolution. In fact EU4 does have some parts of the interface that scales with higher resolutions, but I don't remember in which patch this was added.

 

[Arylin]

On my part, I'd like to see the following:

1. The "Our Claimants" section of the ledger jumping to the title in question when selected. Currently it only jumps when you close the ledger, which is annoying when trying to quickly identify where several claimable titles are located.

Also appreciated would be the ability to select the claimant directly from that section for appraisal, and a way to mark claims as claims of special interest with priority alerts when they can be pressed.

2. The "Weak Claims" notification should order claims and jump to each in a rotation grouped by region when selected (the way de jure ducal claims do). It currently seems unsorted in any particular order. It should also auto fill in the resulting popup with the selected claim; I'd suggest that the auto opening of the declaration of war popup work for de jure ducal notifications as well.

3. The Chronicle's entries for the player successfully leading their army and capturing places could be compressed into a single entry covering all of them at the end of the year (or just by updating the first entry), rather than having multiple entries eating up pages unnecessarily.

4. The Message Log should resize itself so that it doesn't overlap the bottom of the extended province view when the latter is open. Additionally, log entries should be interactive; currently, clicking on items of interest such as characters, locations and tech advancements in a particular county does nothing.

5. An indication of the progress towards higher prosperity or depopulation levels. Was there a reason this was a hidden value?

6. On the Epidemics map mode, a visualization of the effects of disease resistance affecting the potential spread of a developing epidemic. There can be a lighter shade on surrounding unaffected counties indicating an elevated risk of spreading in a particular direction; comparing infection weights for each nearby county isn't particularly interesting.

7. The ability to customize the "Characters of Special Interest" section of the outliner. Oftentimes I have characters marked for granting titles, for idle interest (following the infant last member of a dynasty, for example), or for arranging marriages, so them all being lumped together is a major annoyance.

Also useful would be displaying characters' names according to their character sheet: "Duke Angelbert of Brabant" at a glance is more informative than "Angelbert Nibelunging".

8. A notification if I have a vassal or holding that a vassal or vassal of a vassal desires control of. For example, at times I find myself with a non-de jure vassal whose existence I only come to know of when his de jure liege declares a de jure claim war on him. Being able to avoid all that unpleasantness by transferring them away before that happens would be nice.

9. Dynasty view filters to show living unmarried members and all living landed members.

10. For prisoners in the intrigue screen, adding the conditions under which they are held (oubliette, dungeon, house arrest) next to the duration of their imprisonment; inspecting each one to find out gets a little tedious when you've a large number of them.

Lastly, a fix for the old issue of being unable to invite married women with matrilineally-married husbands would be greatly appreciated; the catch-22 remains annoying.

 

[El-Daddy]

Very impressed with the level of suggestions people have here. Some of them are really great, and even a few are implemented it would help the game immensely.