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CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

What’s this, a dev diary on a Monday?! Yes, it’s true, we’ve moved them to Mondays so they’ll coincide with CK2 streams. The Reaper’s Due has been out for a while now, and I am very pleased with how both it and the free update were received (I wasn’t sure the focus on Death would be so universally appreciated!) As Game Director, I rarely have time to do much coding and scripting anymore, but I did help out with the optimizations and several of the Game Rules. The game is in safe hands though; the current CK2-team has done an amazing job so far!

Work has now commenced on the next expansion and I can already reveal it’s going to be something a bit similar to Way of Life, which I believe I actually mentioned in my previous dev diary. I also promised optimizations, AI improvements and quality of life stuff. Well, the optimizations are done for now, so the next major free update will feature AI and GUI improvements, which brings me to today’s topic; usability.

Now, we are aiming to tweak several interfaces and while I cannot go into much detail yet, I can say that I’d especially like to address the following main areas:
  • Plotting (quality of life)
  • Prisoner management
  • Guardian vs Educator (clarity)
  • More space for Traits and Character Modifiers
There are other things in the works too, but when you’ve worked on a game for so many years you tend to get blind to many usability issues and simply accept them as they are. That is why I’d like to hear from you, our faithful fans, what you find most annoying and clunky about the CK2 interfaces. Are there any actions you find hard to do, or useful information you cannot easily find (or not at all)? All feedback is welcome!

That is all for now; the floor is yours...

Don't miss today's livestream - Medieval Monday with Emil and Doomdark - 16:00CEST on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
 
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I'd really like to see a hotkey/shortcut for the send invite to Carousing button, specifically the one labelled "Do It!" For practically every other instance of this button, C is the default but there's nothing for this one. Quite a pain to have to click that much for every single invite.
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idk where i should put this but i'd like to thank the paradox for enabling the defines to allow for more portrait slots

i dont think it's a coincidence that it showed up during this expansion since ive noted in the modding suggestions thread a few months back that portrait slots were limited so im very happy that it is now unlimited

i really appreciate the accommodation to modders
 
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Please!

I would love some automatic prisoner handling or ways to do bulk operations on prisoners. Ransom them all! Murder them all! Maybe only murder them if they can't be ransomed and I won't suffer a penalty.

MULTIPLE SELECTIONS should be a thing everywhere it's conceivable you might wish to select more than one thing.

Also, for the love of all that is good in the world, BIGGER FONTS, TRAIT ICONS, ETC. AT HIGHER RESOLUTION! There are some mods to help, but they really shouldn't be necessary. Let me adjust these things myself, or at least provide readable defaults that scale with screen resolution. Things are way too small by default.

Other things that would be fantastic...

TITLE MANAGEMENT:
  • Automatic transfer of vassals to their de jure lieges. I'm really tired of having some random count who should be a vassal of some duke become my vassal. Meanwhile, that duke is mad at me. Once I figure this out (usually because I'm up against the vassal limit), I have to go hunting around for the right person to transfer them to. Make it a checkbox I can click to keep my empire tidy.
  • It would be especially nice if I could group titles into some unit that I could save and grant repeatedly (honestly, do I really need separate viceroys for Croatia and Serbia?), but I'd settle for multiple selections.
  • Why, oh why can I only ask for help distributing my new titles once in my lifetime?
  • Automatic commander promotion option. Commanders die. It happens. Just find me the most qualified guy and make him a commander.
CHARACTER FINDER:
  • Better character search. Can we eliminate people with great pox from our list of potential mates? Maybe keep it to people of a certain age? Hey, maybe my character is really into geniuses... Some kind of sort-by-compatibility would also be neat.
  • Along the same lines, I have acquired a new holding. I'd like to grant it to somebody who neither holds a title nor is an heir to one. Maybe I want someone who isn't even in line for any titles. I can filter rulers but not heirs, and that makes me sad.
  • Let me save filters that I use frequently so that I don't have to go adjusting all the boxes over and over again.
  • Restore the filters I was using last when I load a saved game.
  • Give me a button to reset all the filters.
ARMIES:
  • Make it easier to distinguish armies containing holy orders on the map.
  • Allow army movement through boats ala EU4.
NOTIFICATIONS:
  • It's pretty difficult to decide whether or not to support a plot without knowing who the target is, and the popup just gives us a name. Make it a link to their character profile!
  • At higher speeds notifications come very quickly. Sometimes, while you're closing one, another shows up, and it's clicked instead. Don't know what to do about it, but it's a problem.
MISC:
  • Add a table of contents to the chronicle. Bookmarks showing reigns? Hundreds of years is a lot to page through.
  • Dynasty tree should have panning and/or scrollbars.
 
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1) I would love a "resync clients" button for MP OOS resolution. I don't know if there is an easier way to resolve, but right now we save the game and have everyone restart their clients and load the save game again.

2) An addition of an in game (as opposed to mod/editing files yourself) way of creating a list of names to be picked from for children would be nice. The game will somewhat pull a little from family history, but not very much.

3) Add acquisition of specific titles as possibilities for character goals. Right now, become King of X is an option. But what if you're already King of X, have piety and gold, a wife, and plenty of children of both genders. It'd be nice to set a bordering duchy or de jure empire as your next goal. You could even take it a step further and have the AI start suggesting courses of actions that further that goal to you (Hey, I can head on over to our neighbors and start fabricating a claim). Conversely, it'd be nice to know what your subjects are aiming for as well. You can somewhat know if they want something that's yours, but knowing what they want from someone else is a bit trickier.
Edit: other character goals that would be nice to be able to set:
Decrease heresy and religious unrest in realm.
Better relations with vassals and/or liege.
Improve economy/military capabilities of demense.
Prepare for/petition for a crusade.

4) Victoria II had a button that allowed you to tell your armies to go handle rebels automatically. Obviously these aren't the same games, and standing levies are the norm in most cases, but some way of designating troops to form up and go chase down viking raiders and various rebellions would be nice. I'm sure some people play the game like to micro manage every battle and great for them. Everybody plays for different reasons though, and mine reason to play isn't to play whack a mole with raiders who's ships I can't sink or block.

5) While we're on the subject of peasant revolts, some degree of role playing prompts in the lead up to them would be a great improvement over sudden appearances of large revolts you're ill prepared for. While I don't expect the game to play itself out in my favor for me, I think a gathering of armed peasants 4 times the size of any army that could be raised inside the realm would have some lead up to it that might get noticed and mentioned by someone. (Should we tell anyone about the 10k armed and angry peasants out in the fields? Nah, I'm sure it's fine). There will always be reversals you're not prepared for, but by popping some story text boxes a bit beforehand that allow you the chance to avert, lessen, or increase disaster, with your relationship with your councilors and their and your skill level being a driving factor in how you can handle the events, would make it seem more story based and less like an arbitrary event thrown at you by the AI.

6) Have counsellor actions scale up with title of thr ruler. A King or emperor should be able to focus on a duchy, instead of a county.
 
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Cheers for the DD Doomdark :D. A focus on AI and UI for the patch sounds tops (AI in particular, although CK2 is so complicated that I'm sure there useful UI tweaks as well).
 
The arrange marriage/betrothal window could use some tweaks. Currently, it is annoying to determine where someone's claim is without previously knowing its location. For example, my character needs a wife and I found a potential spouse in Clydesdale with a claim on Deheubarth. If I don't know where Deheubarth is, I can click on her portrait, then click on the claim. This will directly show me the claim's location; however, it will close the marriage window and force me to find the courtier again. (Note that even hitting the back button in the character window will not work to find her again - that instead returns me to my character's screen.) I can likewise use the title search to find Deheubarth, but this again closes the marriage window. Alternatively, I can click on the Clydesdale icon in the marriage window, which will center the map on her current residence. This is helpful, but it may not directly show me where the claims are (particularly if they are far apart, as in this example). Thus, I suggest the following:

1. Allow the marriage window to remain open while players peruse claims and other such things.
2. Add courtiers viewed by clicking in the marriage window to the character window history, allowing ease of access via the back button.
3. Similarly, a forward button in the character window (similar to the back button) would simply be a nice feature to have, particularly when browsing many characters.
4. Using the mouse wheel with the marriage window open could also be improved - currently, it is a bit finicky as to where the mouse wheel will control the map and where it will control the marriage window scrollbar.

P.S.: I do not own Reaper's Due, so apologies if these issues are corrected in that DLC.
 
Sometimes you wanna transfer A vassal's vassalage to B vassal. You have to retract vassalage first and then transfer vassalage. I hope this progross could be done in one buttom.

And as a Chinese User. I hope you could get Chinese language version.

Btw, any plan about east Asia DLC?
 
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It has one though? Or what do you mean?

It does have one. And it's automatic on all character searches as far as I've seen. (Though it only displays for those you CAN invite. If they're a ruler, or some other reason you can't invite them, there's no thumbs up or thumbs down.) But there's no yellow hand telling you that a gift would be enough to persuade them to come. You have to open up why each character is saying no, and GUESS if your gift will produce enough plusses to get them to join you. If it's close, you can spend a lot of money (especially in the early game if you're a small country) trying to get that one special councillor.
 
Sometimes you wanna transfer A vassal's vassalage to B vassal. You have to retract vassalage first and then transfer vassalage. I hope this progross could be done in one buttom.

And as a Chinese User. I hope you could get Chinese language version.

Btw, any plan about east Asia DLC?

Please don't do East Asia DLC. The people asking for it are a VERY vocal minority. Most of us just want existing mechanics to improve. And we finally actually have the game running quickly and smoothly. My machine could handle East Asia DLC without so much as a hiccup, as it's top-of-the-line, but my old machine could barely handle India, and even then the game became unplayable after a few centuries.

Please, please, please, don't give in to the vocal minority who want East Asia. Make a separate Crusader Kings for East Asia or something.
 
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Unfortunately I don't currently have time to read all the suggestions, but I do need to get mine in before I forget some. On the last Dev Diary, I did offer some suggestions, those actually fit better here:

I'd like to see a game option determining if unreformed tribals can change their society to feudal or merchant republic, or alternately, to ban even reformed tribals from making the switch without a conquest of a suitable county.

The chance of a dethroned noble who has a retinue to go nomad raider to pay for their army and maybe conquer a new home.

Families to care about what happens to their members, I've seen people ignore their unlawfully executed children or sacrificed sons/daughters/brothers/sisters/parents, no opinion modifier at all. Also, if a noble is known to have murdered at least one spouse, or executed them without any visible reason, treason being a good solid example, there should be modifiers influencing how likely someone is to agree to a betrothal/marriage, with a greater negative for more than one suspicious or unlawful death.

The ability to plot to imprison someone, alternately the ability to plot an abduction, either for marriage or just to throw them into your prison. Actually getting the person to be carried off into the plan would naturally make it far easier and remove the negative from them for the action.

A pilgrimage to the Wailing Wall or the Third Temple for Jewish characters, depending on the state of the temple. The current owner of Jerusalem could maybe block these or tax them.

Maybe a change to proselytize for the Jewish lords, as their religion doesn't exactly do that. I think encouraging those of the faith to move in would be in character, could change culture and religion. I'd welcome feedback from those of the playerbase more aware of how things would be done in a Jewish realm.

A random character generator for the Ruler Designer wouldn't be amiss.

And last but very much not least, Please By All That Is Holy, have Call To Arms pause the game by default! Please!
 
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Okay, I am officially hyped for not only the next DLC but the patch also! QoL features + WoL like DLC? Yes please!
 
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Easier prisoner control. ie. An easy way to select the same decision (release/execute/ransom) for several prisoners at the same time instead of having to manually deal with every one. Don't try to implement this by putting in an execute/ransom/release all prisoners because that undermines our control, as we could be executing/releasing/ransoming specific prisoners we wanted to keep. So an easier simpler and faster way to manage prisoner decisions.
 
When there is an event involving several characters, all should me mentioned in event popup!
 
Please!
  • Automatic commander promotion option. Commanders die. It happens. Just find me the most qualified guy and make him a commander.

This! I get that you sometimes want to add a special character ( for diffrent reasons ) to be your commander, but this would save a lot of time.
Maybe a box like in intrigues? "Auto-Select" Then you can decide for yourself how you want it?
 
Can we eliminate people with great pox from our list of potential mates? Maybe keep it to people of a certain age? Hey, maybe my character is really into geniuses...
You can search for special traits, including "genius", by typing the trait name into the search box in Character Finder...
 
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Plots must be more varied and interesting. The court life itself should be more lively and surprisng ...

But yeah, a second "Way of Life" would be just awesome!

I also miss more content for peasants and monasteries ... both are so important for medieval times.
 
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For prisoner management:

- Can we have a "Ransom all" button?
- Can we ha small symbol next to the portrait when the person captured is affecting warscore? I've accidentally ransomed a couple of important people by accident.
 
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