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CK3 Dev Diary #08 - Courts, Guests, and Wanderers

Hello everyone!

To most of you I’m a new “face”, so let me introduce myself. I was a Content Designer on CK2 for Reaper’s Due, Monks & Mystics and Jade Dragon, where my most important contribution was essential cat content (yes, I also wrote the Spymaster Mittens event chain, and yes, the cat portrait in CK2’s animal kingdom is based on my real-life furbaby). Since JD, I’ve been on the excellent CK3 team and we can’t wait for you to see everything we’ve worked on! Sadly, I don’t have any cat news for you today, but I have something that is nearly as exciting: the Court, Guests, and Wanderers.

The courts of CK3 are very similar to those in CK2. The Court consists of your landless subjects, such as some of your Family, Knights, and Councillors. However, you will generally have fewer Courtiers than in CK2. Courtiers who don’t have any duties or other reasons for staying will eventually decide to leave in pursuit of other opportunities. Fear not – they will let you know before they go. Courtiers leaving might feel like a bad thing, but I promise, it’s actually a part of a really neat feature (more on that further down). In addition to enabling the neat feature, this also means your remaining Courtiers will be more relevant to you than before. No more random strangers at the dinner table!

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Your Court will still be a bustling place, full of new acquaintances. In addition to the Courtiers, the core members of your court, you will also have Guests paying you visits. These individuals will interact with your Courtiers and appear in events. Guests stay for a few years before they leave. If you want a Guest to stick around, you can recruit them. Just remember to give them a reason to stay! Giving them a spot on the council or a shiny title never fails, but seducing them also does the trick.

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Guests look for opportunities and will be more likely to visit if they think you might recruit them. For example, Claimants will seek you out if you are strong enough to press their Claims, and suitors might appear if you or your adult children are unmarried. The interface will give you a handy overview to easily identify Guests with special Skills, Traits and Claims. You also have some influence over the type of Guests you attract. There are Invitation Decisions you can take to increase the chance of having good Knights and Claimants visiting, and there is a Dynasty Perk to increase the likelihood of useful Guests.

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But where do all these Guests come from? You see, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much… Oh, you meant “where are they before they appear in my court”? Well, characters without a permanent home wander around on the map, and visit Courts along the way. This is where characters leaving your court comes in - they will become Wanderers! For example, a son or daughter who is too far down in the line of succession to inherit might become a Wanderer to find a new Liege to press their Claims. Characters might also find themselves on the road by being banished or losing all their land.

All of this means that your guests often have interesting backstories. Many of them have families and relationships, and they keep developing during their journeys. If you check in on a family member who is out wandering, you might find that they have married or picked up some new skills (or a juicy secret…) since they left your Court. Perhaps they’ve even become a Mercenary Captain or the head of a Holy Order!

In the world of CK3, your ruler is the main character, but it is our hope that courtiers, guests, and wanderers will become a great supporting cast. I’m looking forward to hearing about all the little subplots you will discover.

That is all for this Development Diary my friends. Take care and we’ll see you in 2020!
 
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All of this means that your guests often have interesting backstories. Many of them have families and relationships, and they keep developing during their journeys. If you check in on a family member who is out wandering, you might find that they have married or picked up some new skills (or a juicy secret…) since they left your Court. Perhaps they’ve even become a Mercenary Captain or the head of a Holy Order!
This all sounds very cool indeed, but a question springs to mind: is it possible to "keep up" with these wanderers? Is it possible, for example, to see that they have joined holy orders and lobby/use influence to help them into elevated positions? Is it possible to form links with foreign courts through them? Maybe to gain spies in far places through them? Help them out when in trouble and generally do favours to attract them back, or to get them favouring you when they achieve the prominence they so richly deserve?
 
Housecarls would be more anglo-saxon (old saxon) rather than Nordic maybe actual vikings for vikings?
Huscarls are definetly appropriate for Norse cultures, as they also had Huscarls. Whether the Nordic cultures borrowed the term from the Anglo-Saxons, or the other way around is not really known though. The term Viking was a temporary job title. It was used to describe a person who was going on a raid ("going viking"), so while raiding a person was a viking, but when they were not raiding they were not a viking, then they were a farmer or a trader or fisher etc. So this would not be an appropriate descriptor for a Knight localization.
 
I really like these new features, and having guests in your court seems to add a lot of flavour.

Speaking of flavour, though: Will all dynasties, regardless of religion and culture, use the same shields for their coats of arms, as seen in this thread? I certainly hope that is not the case and just due to being under development.
 
Please don't add any of those stupid cat and horse events in this game. D:
 
Thanks for the welcome and your feedback! :) I'm really glad you liked M&M and TRD, had some great fun working on those DLCs together with the rest of the CK2 team. I won't say exactly what, but some of the features I worked on during those DLCs was stuff I got to implement for CK3, which was really cool, like I've come full circle :)

Confirmation that Societies will be in CK3? Cats?
 
What about councilors, who are sent to another country for something like improving relations? Are they a guest at the court of this country?

Edit: And btw, what's about carousing or attendig a coronation, if that's still a thing?
 
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I hope imperial courts will be allowed to be huge, and king courts quite large. There are relatively few kings and emperors on the map, so this shouldn't cause much slowdown.

Are there any mechanics for your character to be away from home on travel and encountering wandering courtiers on the road?
 
Oh damn, how will I be able to resist a month without a CK3 dev diary?! :eek:

:p
 
Is there any historical precedent for a lord forcing some of his courtiers without family ties to marry someone without any reasons like siring a bastard?

"Forcing" is changing the subject. The CK2 buttons are called "Arrange marriage" and "Arrange betrothal". And there's plenty of historical precedent for feudal lords arranging marriages for their courtiers.

The clearest examplar I can think of is the "'best knight that ever lived'", William Marshall, who made his name as a courtier. Henry II "gave William the large royal estate of Cartmel in Cumbria, and the keeping of Heloise, the heiress of the northern barony of Lancaster. It may be that the king expected him to take the opportunity to marry her and become a northern baron, but William seems to have had grander ambitions for his marriage. ... Henry therefore promised him the marriage and lands of Dionisia, lady of Châteauroux in Berry." This marriage also fell through, but Henry "promised the Marshal the hand and estates of Isabel de Clare (c.1172–1220), but had not completed the arrangements [before his death]. King Richard however, confirmed the offer and so in August 1189, at the age of 43, the Marshal married the 17-year-old daughter of Richard de Clare (Strongbow)."

Another helpful example involves Marshall's daughter-in-law, Margaret de Quincy, who "has been described as 'one of the two towering female figures of the mid-13th century'". While de Quincy's own marriages were arranged by the relevant families, "Margaret and her husband paid King Henry the large sum of 5,000 pounds to obtain his agreement to the marriage of their daughter Maud to Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford, 2nd Earl of Gloucester." Even though the Marshall-de Quincy power couple had some of the largest estates in the British Isles, they still needed to bribe Henry to arrange the marriage because young de Clare was a royal ward (and therefore a courtier for the purposes of CK2). This deal is exactly replicated by the CK2 mechanic of buying a Favour and then 'forcing' acceptance of an Arrange Marriage proposal.

Quotations are from the relevant Wikipedia articles (CC-BY-SA). The Marshall epitaph is attributed there to Stephen Langton; the de Quincy epitaph is attributed to L.E.Mitchell Portraits of Medieval Women (2003).
 
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You can invite specific people to court, but they will be a lot more hesitant to say yes than in CK2. However, you can use hooks (as mentioned by Voffvoffhunden in a previous DD) to "convince" characters to become your courtier, even if they'd rather stay where they are.

Can there be an opposite effect? I.e. an unlanded courtier who knows that his liege knows his (coutrier's) terrible secret may decide to run away to the other end of the world (line of reasoning: "I am good with a sword, I can find profitable position anywhere there is a war on, why stay somewhere where they know too much about me?"

Also, can the movements of courtiers be influenced by attitudes of other people and things happening around? For example:

A) ruler character ("Duke so-an-so likes hunting and throwing a wild party, that's the place to be!" or "Emir this-and-that is an agressive warmonger, a good fighter like me can raise fast in his court" or maybe even "King N is rich, but gullible, I can sell him my philosopher's stone recipe three times", "King L is a womaniser, but generous - that's the place for a practical gal, like me")

B) ruler conditions ("King W is old and frail, certainly he will pay a good healer like me a nice stipend")

C) ruler's behaviour ("Count von X has just raised a rebellion against his King! We'll soon be besieged - let's scram!" or "Count X has bravely declared defiance against tyrannical King Z - a worthy knight like me must ride to his banners!", "Our dumb duke has angered the Pope, the realm could be excommunicated soon, better leave")

D) current wars ("Emirate has just declared a holy jihad for the conquest of this place - I'd better move to England")

E) membership of sects, societies, cults - ("Another Brother of Black Goat was burned last week, they must be onto us, time to move" or "A dominican friar has just received a bishopric from Lord X, I am dominican lay brother, maybe there is a cushy job for me in that realm")

F) current events ("plague is already in next province, time to move", "They found gold in province V - maybe I can grab some somehow")

G) province features/buildings - ("Vikings are getting bolder, better move to Lutetia, it's much better fortified then my current abode" or "Prince F has just build a largest observatory in Christendom, as a scholar I just must go visit").

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Also, can wanderers lie about their identities? For example you welcome some urbane and cultured nobleman, entertain him for a year, then he leaves and you learn that it was in fact you worst enemy's spymaster in disguise?
 

Oh, how about this idea for a building, Inns. Increases the chance to attract wanderers, and wanderers passing through might spend some money.

Add a brothel and a silk road trade post and a pilgrimage site or wonder and you got yourself a medieval tourism industry!
 
THIS would be pretty neat, maybe with traits, modifiers or nicknames based on how far they've been travelling?
Spot on! A wanderer that has traveled the Silk Road would have a story or two to tell and would make good company at court. Perhaps also some diplomatic traits due to language skills and knowledge of foreign customs
 
Will courtiers also represent landed nobility within a realm that doesn't necessarily hold a title or a title that exists in-game (i.e. people who definitely has a reason to stay)? We surely need more internal politics than we got in CK2. Bureaucratic nobility if you will.