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CK2 Dev Diary #55: Nurture vs Nuisance

Hello everyone!

Yes folks, it’s time to answer that age old question: can human behavior be nurtured, or is it too much of a nuisance? Educating children in CK2 is a powerful tool to sculpt your future character and supporting cast, but it can also become a bit of nuisance, at least if you have Conclave. This issue has been on my radar for awhile, but we finally got around to addressing it with a three pronged assault. First, since children don’t actually need an assigned Guardian or a set Childhood or Education Focus, we added a Game Rule controlling when you get Education Alerts; for all children, your close relatives, or just your own character and your primary heir. Secondly, there really isn’t any reason why you should not be able to assign a Guardian for children below the age of 6 - it’s just annoying to have to wait for a specific birthday. So... now you can. Lastly, and probably most significantly, being the default “Educator” for all children at court means you can get spammed with a lot of upbringing events concerning kids you don’t care about. Thus, we added a new “Honorary Title” called Teacher. The Court Teacher becomes the default Educator for all kids at court that don’t have a specific Guardian (so you can still make yourself the Guardian for two kids you care about and get their upbringing events, for example.) Together, these changes make upbringing far less of a hassle.

Education Alerts.png


Teacher Title.png


But enough about that; time to say a few words about the next patch! We’ve been keeping a close eye on your feedback and have decided to release an Open Beta patch (probably next week) which should fix the worst outstanding issues and tide you over the summer. The patch should hopefully address most of your concerns. We will not go into full detail for all points now (we’ll save that for when it comes out), but we’re hoping to have solutions for the following issues:
  • Infinite Epidemics
  • Tribal Inheritance Issues (Tribal rulers turning Feudal on succession)
  • AI Pathfinding during Crusades
  • Soul Corruption events appearing for non-Satanists
  • Secret Cult Frequency - For this one we did a lot of testing & balancing, hopefully with the following changes they shouldn’t appear too frequently:
    • When a Secret Religious Cult reveals itself, all members will join in the conversion instead of just the ones in the same realm
    • The AI is now more often unsuccessful in recruiting new members to Secret Religious Cults
    • Priests, Zealous characters and Paranoid characters are now much less likely to join a secret cult
    • Characters accused of Apostasy (with the modifier) can no longer Induce Sympathy, Induct or Invite characters to Secret Cults
    • The cooldown between inviting/inducting characters into Secret Cults increased to 10 years from 5
    • The AI is now less likely to recruit/induct characters into cults if they are in a realm without a player
    • Lowered the maximum amount of members the AI can recruit into Secret Religious Cults to a more modest number (from 370 to 91)
    • Characters in Secret Religious Cults can now only use Prepare Grounds in counties they or their vassals own
    • The AI is now much less inclined to create a secret religious cult just because their liege is a player
That’s all for now! Stay tuned for next week’s dev diary, and be sure to check out the livestream today, starting at 17:00 CET (not 16 this time.)
 
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If the teacher is going to be taking care of people I couldn't be arsed about, I'm going to grant the teacher title to a slow or imbecile person every time, for my personal amusement.
 
The dragon-looking button probably triggers the overworld map to not show parts of the world we don't know about (like in EU); it's a dragon because it will be shown in an awesome, medieval map style with fanciful monsters, mythical islands, and "Here Be Dragons".
 
Instead of having teacher why not have an "honorary title" for a teacher in each education field?

Diplomacy - Mentor
Martial - Trainer
Steward - Teacher
Intrigue - Tutor
Learning - Instructor
 
My money is on the dragon (which looks like a western dragon with barbels IMO) button opening a UI or map mode for something like a "Chinese Influence" mechanism.
 
My money is on the dragon (which looks like a western dragon with barbels IMO) button opening a UI or map mode for something like a "Chinese Influence" mechanism.

Kinda strange that someone in Mali or Finland would have access to that feature. Its really prominent for something that only half or less of the map needs to worry about.
 
Maybe we are overthinking the dragon button, and it is as simple as LITERAL DRAGONS being added to the game?

I'd personally like both east Asia and DRAGONS, because India ain't fun without China, and I want to slay dragons as Vikings or Muslims
 
Kinda strange that someone in Mali or Finland would have access to that feature. Its really prominent for something that only half or less of the map needs to worry about.

I'm not suggesting that is the permanent location or size etc. of the UI button. Don't they typically just stick things like that anywhere convenient during development?

And people in Mali and landlocked Europe have access to the trade post/trade route map mode in spite of having no use for it, too.
 
Instead of having teacher why not have an "honorary title" for a teacher in each education field?

Diplomacy - Mentor
Martial - Trainer
Steward - Teacher
Intrigue - Tutor
Learning - Instructor

In the MA, "instructor" was strictly military, tutor and teacher didn't existed til the end of CK2 timeline (trainer is even more recent) ; a mentor is more an adviser, and both Tutor and Mentor are preceptors (they take care of 1 child at a time).


I don't think tutor is a very good choice, since it doesn't even describe very well the role - a tutor is more of a preceptor, though he is supposed to take care of ALL children.
I remain convinced that magister/master or "scholar" are better choices, magister being the most correct choice - a magister was usually a cleric or a monk who took care of the education of multiple children that precisely didn't have preceptors, and scholar is wide enough to cover all aspects of the function.
I may be wrong, but I feel that people like "tutor" more only because the word feels more medieval (which is false), so it would be a good thing to provide arguments. "Magister" has the advantage of being historically somewhat accurate, and it's exactly what "teacher" means.
 
Educating children in CK2 is a powerful tool to sculpt your future character and supporting cast, but it can also become a bit of nuisance, at least if you have Conclave.

What about those of us who liked Conclave, but hated its attempt to fix an Education system that was already great?

We need a Game Rule regarding the Education system. We have been asking for this choice since February 2016...
 
Two suggestions for secret cults. First, since they are available even without Monks and Mystics, can we please get some system in the base game to actively fight them like with the fourth Chaplain action? Second, consider making it so that secret cults / members of those cults are more likely to be discovered or revealed the larger the society is? That adds danger as the cult gets bigger and gives the player a good reason to be careful about who they spend their time recruiting and timing when to actually reveal themselves.
 
What about those of us who liked Conclave, but hated its attempt to fix an Education system that was already great?

We need a Game Rule regarding the Education system. We have been asking for this choice since February 2016...

And you are probably not going to get it because the old education system was overpowered and imbalanced.
 
Two suggestions for secret cults. First, since they are available even without Monks and Mystics, can we please get some system in the base game to actively fight them like with the fourth Chaplain action?

This is something that should be addressed.

I disagree with the second one in light of these other changes it would be too heavy a nerf.
 
What about those of us who liked Conclave, but hated its attempt to fix an Education system that was already great?

We need a Game Rule regarding the Education system. We have been asking for this choice since February 2016...
The old education system was awful though? It only cared about one thing and that was the guardian's education trait and then it gave a weighted random for the ward to get theirs in the same attribute. It didn't take into account the ward's or guardians stats, traits or anything else.
Children got the exact same personality traits as adults which also made no sense, you had no control in how your ward's education was focused it was just the trait of the guardian and no real development over time.
I never really got why people hated Conclave's system, the big gripe I always saw was people disliking the spam of events for all your court's kids but this upcoming patch is fixing that.
Not trying to be a dick, but what about the old system was better in your opinion? I am all for the game rule just to offer more customisation but I never understood why people prefer the old system
 
These sound like good changes to secret cults. If there's any continuing worries I have, they come from pagans.

First is the "Book under Pillow" event. Refusing still gives 100 piety, which is a pretty big piety event. I worry that a secret cult operating in a defensive pagan owned area may feed the ruler too much piety, and thus, make them much harder to conquer.

The second is when a secret cult succeeds against unreformed areas. The risk of vassal rebellion is to be expected, but the aftermath of converting counties back would be a serious hassle. The success rate of county conversion is a bit too low for unreformed pagans anyway, in my own opinion. Given that most pagans are tribal (at least without Horse Lords, which I don't own), that's going to be a hit to whoever rules that area.
 
I think the old education system allowed you for more control over your kids - every time you assigned a guardian with a particular education, all kids educated by him got very similar stats and education level. Now, you might not get the tier IV education of your choice, because your kid simply does not have the traits required.

I personally like the conclave system just for that reason, as it allows for more RP-ing.