Hello friends,

Isn't it satisfying when things just work smoothly? If you agree then this Dev Diary will be right down your alley. I’m one of the jolly UX designers working on CK3 and today I’m very excited to give you a sneak peek of some of the quality of life improvements we have in store for the Azure free patch.

We wanted to focus on some of the requests you've brought up, so we’ve worked to find organic ways to implement these in the game. While we can’t address all at once in a single patch, we still wanted to make some meaningful adjustments that will improve your time spent as medieval rulers, master strategists, and efficient trackers. Keep on reading to understand this last one.

Today I’ll be covering Raise Men-at-Arms, Game Rules Presets, and Character Search Presets.

Raise only Men-at-Arms
We had already mentioned that now you will be able to start your games with contingent Men-at-Arms regiments, but these troops have another nifty trick under their sleeves. Now you will be able to raise only Men-at-Arms, allowing you to subdue your enemies without having to bother your levies. Quite a power move, right?

We know it’s dangerous to go adventuring alone, so raising Men-at-Arms will also raise your knights along with them. This ensures that you have a perfectly capable army to take on different challenges.

This is how it works; you will find a button that allows you to raise only Men at Arms in your Military menu, clearly labeled “Raise all Men-at-Arms”. This button will also be present when selecting Rally Points. Hopefully, this will give you more freedom when planning the perfect military strategy.

[Image of the Raise all Men-at-Arms action]
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Game Rules presets
We all have different playstyles and sometimes it’s nice to spice things up by changing up the rules a bit. Sometimes we want to ask the Mongols to hold their horses and stay at home by turning off the Mongol Invasions, or maybe you want to see if you can withstand yearly visits from your friendly neighbors, the Norse invaders. To allow you to quickly change the rules, now you can save rules presets.

To create your Game Rules presets, all you need to do is set the specific combination of rules that you want, and then click the save button at the top of the window. Doing this will open up a secondary window that lets you name, and save your presets. Loading the presets is very straightforward, all you need to do is to select the desired preset from the dropdown menu at the top of the window.

[Image of the Game Rules Presets being saved] ​

Character Search presets
I said that the Azure patch will improve your tracking skills, and this is thanks to the introduction of Character Search Presets. Much like Game Rules Presets, the idea is to allow you to save different combinations of search filters into presets you can easily select.

You can save and load presets by using the 2 new buttons you’ll find at the top of the search filters window. That means that if you find yourself constantly searching for a specific mix of traits or any other search criteria, then keeping tabs on them will be much easier.

[Image of the new Character Search Preset buttons]
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While this feature is very useful to streamline the process of recurrent searches with the same criteria, it still comes with some limitations, we are not able to save the dynamic objects in the filter (Dynasty, House and Custom Faith).

That’s all for today, I sincerely hope these quality of life improvements help you try other gameplay styles and that character search presets will make it easier for you to find that special someone somewhere in this fantastic medieval world.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for future updates on the Azure patch. Until next time!

 

[Sheerpwnage]

This is fantastic news. CK3 keeps getting better and better!

 

[warband]

It is nice to see that the feedback from the community is being used to improve the game, keep doing so.

 

[Madfrancis]

Now that levies are officially useless can we get a raise timer for actual troops (MaA and the-now-easier-to-raise mercenaries)? As it is troops just teleport everywhere and the only limited restraints in place were for levies. Makes the game unplayable in Multiplayer, not to mention completely defeats the purpose of charging troops to embark.

 

[Herennius]

Now that levies are officially useless

They are not. You might not need them for some/most wars, if you have reached a certain stage of the game, but thats different from being useless. Having played more than 100h CK3 and I yet have to experience a situation where I would feel save without having at least the option to raise my levies.

 

[Hauskupa]

Cool!

 

[G_George18]

The Character Search presets will save me a lot of time. Thank you!

 

[james2037]

Brilliant news. Thanks guys.

One thing I'd like to see on the character search would be for the finder to allow for "OR" statements in the traits.

When searching for a guardian for a child, I want to find someone with the "Genius" trait or - failing that - "Intelligent" or Quick. At the moment, searching for those three traits at once returns zero results (as the traits are mutually exclusive). It'd be good if there was some way of returning all characters (within the other parameters) who have one of those three traits, rather than having to run the search multiple times.

Could either be that the finder notices any mutually exclusive traits that you've included and treats those as "OR" - or by creating something in the interface that let's the player switch between "one of" or "all of" when selecting multiple traits.

Adding onto this, I'd also love to be able to have a "NOT" operator.

So if I was going for the "Found Witch Coven" decision, for example, I could search for all adults in my house who are not a witch.

edit: I think the best way to find a guardian for a child would be a "relevance" sort (as "Find Spouse" has)

 

[浅夜丶]

I desperately need to look for a character preset. Without it, I am too lazy to start the next game. When can I use it? Please update as soon as possible.

 

[wowcoolfeatures!]

this is insane that such basic UI features are being lauded as some great gift to us all. hurry tf up

 

[Madfrancis]

They are not. You might not need them for some/most wars, if you have reached a certain stage of the game, but that's different from being useless. Having played more than 100h CK3 and I yet have to experience a situation where I would feel save without having at least the option to raise my levies.

Fine. My hours. Does that make my opinion more legitimate somehow?

Levies are a wasted opportunity for some cool flavor mechanics and now that mercenaries are going to be cheaper, they will be even less of a factor than they are currently. So essentially, all important units, MaAs and Mercenaries, which will make up the bulk of any real fighting force can now teleport instantly across the globe (and across seas and oceans, for free).

It's pretty telling when one of the major QoL requests is to be able to NOT raise levies when raising troops.

I guess being surrounded by smaller Counties/Duchies with magic, teleporting troops is one way to fix the Empire stability problem.

 

[Herennius]

Fine. My hours. Does that make my opinion more legitimate somehow?
View attachment 726890

Levies are a wasted opportunity for some cool flavor mechanics and now that mercenaries are going to be cheaper, they will be even less of a factor than they are currently. So essentially, all important units, MaAs and Mercenaries, which will make up the bulk of any real fighting force can now teleport instantly across the globe (and across seas and oceans, for free).

It's pretty telling when one of the major QoL requests is to be able to NOT raise levies when raising troops.

I guess being surrounded by smaller Counties/Duchies with magic, teleporting troops is one way to fix the Empire stability problem.

You are free to have your opinion I concede that you have played more and might have mastered the game better. You might also experience more situations in which you are don't need levies. Or maybe you are even so good - or playing only certain realms/characters/in special way - that you never need levies in your games.

My point is just that I don't agree with the totality of the statement "levies are useless", which implies that they never have any use for anyone. I doubt that and I'm drawing my doubts from my own gameplay experience (and I'm sure I'm not the only one - some people agreed with my post above). Also, even if take for a moment the stance that they are completely useless - what have the interface related changes the DD is about with this to do? If I consider levies as unneeded - completely or in a special case - I'm ATM already free to raise them and immediately disband them again. The UI changes make way of playing just more comfortable, which is fine - but I don't seem as indicator that levies are always useless.

That BTW doesn't mean that I'm opposed to changes making them more important or flavourful - I'm just not sharing the completely negative verdict about them.

 

[SrkBlid]

Finally, amazing