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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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In my honest opinion I believe that general optimization of the game as a whole for both minimum spec and high end PC's should be a priority that is higher up on the to do list for you devs but new content on the way is always welcome :)
 
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Especially with immortals now I would love it if you could put in a extra row / more space for traits. I tend to have so many traits on my older character that I cant even hover over them anymore.
 
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It would be great to be able to mass merge armies and navies in different locations. What I mean is, when I carefully raise levies and navies based on which vassals have high opinion of me, each vassal's levy is raised as a separate army. With a demense of 10+ this means I have to click on 10 counties to merge 10 sets of levies. Than I have to click on 10 navies to merge 10 sets of boats. If I could select all of the levies and have those available for merging do so, that would be a quality of life improvement. Same goes for navies.

We don't all just click on the "raise levies" button to have all levies in your empire immediately raised. But even if you do, you still have the extra work of merging vassal levies and personal levies... not to mention retinues and mercenaries.

So, let us mass select several counties and merge all that can be merged, please. :)

Extra credit would be a mass embark of boats. Raise a bunch of levies. Mass select to merge those in the same county. Raise a bunch of boats. Mass select to merge those in the same counties. Mass select levies again and mass embark those levies onto boats. Tons of hours of micromanagement eliminated!
 
I'd like to see health modifiers and the total number of a character (or, at least, yours and your close relatives and/or people in your court). It's not that interesting to either guess if someone has a good health factor or to resort ton the console for that.
 
marceror said:
It would be great to be able to mass merge armies and navies in different locations. What I mean is, when I carefully raise levies and navies based on which vassals have high opinion of me, each vassal's levy is raised as a separate army. With a demense of 10+ this means I have to click on 10 counties to merge 10 sets of levies. Than I have to click on 10 navies to merge 10 sets of boats. If I could select all of the levies and have those available for merging do so, that would be a quality of life improvement. Same goes for navies.

We don't all just click on the "raise levies" button to have all levies in your empire immediately raised. But even if you do, you still have the extra work of merging vassal levies and personal levies... not to mention retinues and mercenaries.

So, let us mass select several counties and merge all that can be merged, please. :)

Extra credit would be a mass embark of boats. Raise a bunch of levies. Mass select to merge those in the same county. Raise a bunch of boats. Mass select to merge those in the same counties. Mass select levies again and mass embark those levies onto boats. Tons of hours of micromanagement eliminated!
Click to expand...

So basically you want to able to set rally points? That would be nice, but what would be especially nice would be if the ai would spread the troops arriving at a rally point over several adjacent counties if the supply limit in the county, which was selected as the rally point, is reached.
 
Zaras said:
So basically you want to able to set rally points? That would be nice, but what would be especially nice would be if the ai would spread the troops arriving at a rally point over several adjacent counties if the supply limit in the county, which was selected as the rally point, is reached.
Click to expand...
No, not rally points (though this wouldn't be bad either). I probably didn't explain myself well enough, so will try again.

I want to be able to select multiple armies in multiple counties, and merge any of those armies that that can be merged in each county, vs. having to select the armies in each county individually. I'd like to be able to do the same thing with my boats.

Then, if PDX is feeling really awesome, I should be able to mass embark those armies into the boats awaiting them in their respective counties.

This would save *so* much time over the course of a campaign.
 
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Just to ensure there is no doubt about what I'm asking for, here's a screenshot. See all those armies that I just raised? And the navies? Let me select them like I have in the photo, AND click the merge button so that the armies grouped together in a county can all be merged with a single click. Same goes for the navies.

As it is now, I will have to click on each county to merge the army there. Then I will have to do the same for the navies. Then I will have to embark each army into their boats individually.

What should happen is I select all armies and merge with a single click. Then I select all navies (using the Alt key) and merge them with a single click. Finally, for extra credit, I select all the armies again and have a button to mass embark those armies onto their respective boats?

C21875056187A8BE917421DDD9B13AD5A5B2E026


Is this making sense yet? The difference is getting my army mobilized in a handful of seconds vs. a couple of minutes.
 
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Your own fault for not keeping large vassals. I could hunt and peck individual armies to put them in boats... or I could click a vassal's coastal province, click raise army, click raise levy, and drop 13k troops in their 20k boats.

This is why we delegate responsibilities and create hierarchies. No baselius has time to make sure each and every duck's army can float :p
 
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Battle marker, or whatever it called. In EU4 there's now like a little sword when battle will heppen in a province, it's thing I can't play without now :D Please add it to CK2 too.
 
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thevmag said:
Your own fault for not keeping large vassals. I could hunt and peck individual armies to put them in boats... or I could click a vassal's coastal province, click raise army, click raise levy, and drop 13k troops in their 20k boats.

This is why we delegate responsibilities and create hierarchies. No baselius has time to make sure each and every duck's army can float :p
Click to expand...
What are you talking about? Do you see how many vassals I have? The number is a very low 17, most of which are, in fact, kings/despots. The small armies you are seeing are from baron level vassals from my own demense.

And by the way, what does your comment have to do with addressing a clear opportunity to improve the interface? I have found it to be decidedly unhelpful.
 
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Here's another interface opportunity. When I click on the county of Constantinople to raise levies, make it so that the levies of the Eccumenical Patriarch are raised as well. Currently, I'm forced to go the military interface, find him in my list of vassals and raise his levies from there. It's been that way since I started playing CK2 in January 2013. Would LOVE to see that finally fixed.

This only seems to happen with this particular vassal.
 
1a) In Character Finder, create a new filter to exclude characters that are not within diplomatic range. This would save me many minutes each time when I am shopping for courtiers to invite. (Why should I even be able to see the stats of people I can't even communicate with? But that's a separate issue.)
1b) In Character Finder, please show me which characters would be willing to accept invitation to my court were I to give them a gift, just like you show which people would be willing to join my plot with a gift in the Invite Plotters screen.

2) Make a way to grant a landed title from the county/holding view. Currently we can spawn a new vassal from that view, but not grant title to an existing character from it.

3a) Please make a way, if there is not one already, to change whose children I receive notices to educate. I often end up with many children not of my family in my court, but the game only lets me know when a family member lacks an childhood focus/education focus/guardian/educator. This often leads to suboptimal education outcomes for the other children. I have started checking and assigning these wards in December just before the autosave, but I'd much rather the game actually help me with this.
3b) Please notify me if an educator's education trait does not match a child's education focus.
 
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I'd like to be able to see information about how my flank composition is affecting my combat tactic chances. I know the tactics exist, and have a rough idea of the kinds of requirements I have to meet to trigger certain combat tactics, but it is not easy or convenient to tailor an army to a set of tactics.

Giving us an interface that shows our possible tactics in real-time as we add or remove units in a flank would make the combat a much more engaging aspect of the game IMO.

I posted about this some time ago HERE.
 
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If you're an Unreformed pagan, or frankly maybe any religion, can we get a Casus Beli for claiming Holy sites, I'm tired of trying to play my pagan slavs and having to wait years for my fabricated claim to appear while playing "marry off as many children to the nomads as possible before they horde-stomp me because i'm tribal" Repeatedly i've fought my way in bloody battle toward Kiev and Polak(?) only to get rolled by a maygar division or such decide it's time to Subjugate the kingom of Ruso-finland, just cause
 
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Also i'm rather sad, i saw "Man Vs Machine" and i thought it was going to talk about another Sunset invasion esque thing. Maybe some sorta stellaris tie-in where an AI army invades ;p
 
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RPPK_Jaeger said:
In my honest opinion I believe that general optimization of the game as a whole for both minimum spec and high end PC's should be a priority that is higher up on the to do list for you devs but new content on the way is always welcome :)
Click to expand...

I'm on the same page as this. I would like to see the optimization and GUI changes go in the direction that Darkrenown is driving for. 2.6.1 and Reaper DLC has been great for the game and would love to see it continue that way. That or just make CK3.
 
When you try to find somebody to invite to your court it's very difficult to navigate the search window. If you scroll fast, you can't notice 1 green "thumb up" among 100 green-ish globes ("out of diplomatic range"). If others has the same problem, then it can be improved. The most radical idea is to change globe to "X" (different shape will be distinguished better). The "X" can be colored in dark tone to highlight other symbols better.
 
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