Dev Diary #119 - Tours and Travel

[Cooleatack]

Why does this post have 38 "respectfully disagree"?
People complained so much about "hold court" to be with a minor level of compulsion + being an additional event source, i would have expected a more enthusiastic response to the player deliberately having to choose to engage with this mechanic.

I dislike that the Royal Court is so passive. If we are going to connect characters to the map, then visiting a court of your liege/vassals should mean something.

I just said it too, but now is the moment to make a smaller ducal court. These two systems are logically made to be used together. Make me actually visit something, and make petitioning your liege important.

We can have far more court events, now that they are limited by tours and traveling. Instead of only being able to hold 3-4 hold court events, holding court should start a “grand tour” for your willing vassals. You’d say as the king: “I summon my vassals for petitioning” And they can decline or accept, and plan their tour to come see you. THAT is what I would envision for a vassal to liege tour, and would make holding court much more interesting than clicking trough a few random events every 5 years + the odd court event that you almost forget, because the notification is so small.

Instead of catering to the complainers that find the feature too “role-playing”, Embrace that you gave us this feature, and make it more interesting. Build upon it, challenge us. Be bolder.

 

[johnty5]

So the net benefit is positive and people will press it for buffs/money, meaning this mechanic will making earning money more easy.
A buff dispenser.

I don’t really get what you mean. I don’t understand in what way it’s a “buff dispenser”.

So long as there’s a cost/downside to using it, it’s not a buff dispenser, but rather a strategic choice to exchange one thing for another - just like holding a feast, taking a particular lifestyle, building a building or any other thing you do in-game.

 

[boorkie]

Easy solution. Put the deteriorating vassal opinion behind the paywall too.

I would argue that an even better solution would be to put the deteriorating vassal opinion behind a setting

 

[Ixal]

I don’t really get what you mean. I don’t understand in what way it’s a “buff dispenser”.

So long as there’s a cost/downside to using it, its not a buff dispenser, but rather a strategic choice to exchange one thing for another - just like holding a feast, taking a particular lifestyle, building a building or any other thing you do in-game.

If downside>benefit no one will use it.
If benefit>downside people will press the button and end up with more buffs/money than without the DLC leading to power creep and making the easy game more easy. (See the jewish loan + expell)

To really integrate new features there must also be new problems.

 

[Cooleatack]

The game released with that. It wasn’t a new system added later.

You can use Steam to play on older patches. If you want updates, there will be changes you disagree with too. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

 

[A lowborn Emperor]

This was my initial reaction but, having thought a bit more about it, I think it’s incorrect.

With the exception of “Hold Court” (which I’ll come to in a minute), CK3 activities aren’t generally inherently “positive net benefit” or “negative net benefit”. If they were, you’d be absolutely right. They’d be buttons you pressed as often as possible (in the case of the former) or have to be forced by the game to press (in the case of the latter).

Instead, activities are situationally positive or negative. Take an activity that’s already in the game - holding a feast for example. It essentially exchanges gold for stress relief and some vassal opinion bonuses. If you’ve got 1000g in the bank, have high stress levels and a bunch of pissy vassals, spending that money is obviously a huge net positive. However, if you’re sat on zero stress, your vassals are happy but you’re trying to save up your meagre income for a war or a building, then spending money to hold a feast is a net negative benefit because you’re wasting money on stuff you don’t need.

Tours appear to work on the same basis. If you’re in a situation where you’ve got the money and a need for the benefits they can provide, then you’d choose to to do them in that situation - whereas if you’re in a situation where you lack the money and/or have no need of the benefits they provide, you wouldn’t hold a tour.

In that regard they’re completely different from the “Hold Court” activity. “Hold Court” doesn’t give you a set of known benefits in exchange for a known payment/downside - it gives you a random set of benefits and downsides. For that reason - unlike yours and other activities - there’s never a situation in which “Click Hold Court” is the solution (which is why “Hold Court”, would benefit from something that forces the player to use it occasionally).

There's also the situation where you hold court just for something to do while waiting 30 years for Empire of the North to pop. Some times it's really just a case of doing something other than starting yet another war. And T&T will soak up a lot more of the 30 year wait than RC will.

Plus I like the random positive/negative consequences of holding court. Most of RC is benign but the occasional chance for something negative to happen or the occasional chance to get a free war against a title is worth doing. Plus you invariably end up displeasing someone while pleasing someone else. Same with feasts, and hunts, it's not all about benefits.

I feel like a lot of people that only do the things that give them an exact benefit in CK3 would have missed out on all the fun, interesting, yet non progressive events in MMOs like WoW and GW. I spent 1000s of hours flying the length of Azaroth just to take part in a 30 minute event that gave me nothing more than a novelty item, or 1000s of hours the other way just to take a screenshot near a interesting geographical feature, because otherwise even a huge MMO becomes boringly repetitive.

 

[johnty5]

If downside>benefit no one will use it.
If benefit>downside people will press the button and end up with more buffs/money than without the DLC leading to power creep and making the easy game more easy.

That would be true if an activity was always “downside>benefit” or “benefit>downside” (for instance an activity that simply exchanged 1g for 100g or vice versa) but that doesn’t seem to be true of tours.

But whether a tour is “downside>benefit” or “benefit>downside” will depend on the players situation.

Take a taxation tour for examples. As far as I can tell, the the downsides are:

a) Upfront payment of gold
b) Opinion malus from vassals

and the benefits are:

c) sum of gold greater than the initial outlay at (a).

Without (b), you’d be absolutely right - it’d be a net positive “buff dispenser” that you’d click as often as possible. It’d be a silly mechanic that would make the game easier.

But the inclusion of (b) makes it positive or negative based on situation. If you’re a new ruler trying to stave off rebellion, or you’re trying to sway a particular character for whatever reason, then pissing off those vassals in exchange for a bit of gold is a net negative action in that situation

Same with relaxation tours. If you’re trying to avoid a mental break and have plenty of cash, they’ll be a net positive. But if you’re relatively stress free and/or are struggling for money, it’d be a net negative.

 

[WestuHal]

A Tour will likely be pretty vital if you've just ascended to the throne, getting those unruly vassals in line and out of factions against you.

Here’s hoping, and understood that this may require tweaks to game balance as it stands! Anecdotal of course, but in my current playthrough, every succession I have had has gone all too smoothly, despite me never using the sway scheme (I have a house rule against using that or the fabricate claim task). Right now I have no need of tours to handle my vassals / boost my coffers, and I suppose I’m concerned that, if I tour, vassal rebellions might become even less of a threat than they are currently. I’d love there to be some increased risk of unruly vassals undermining my authority if I don’t embark on a tour - it doesn’t have to be mandatory in the strict sense of the term, but speaking for myself I’d like to be strongly incentivised to consider using this particular tool to combat the threat of dissension. As I’ve said before, I think it would be particularly fantastic for both roleplaying and strategy if geographical distance was taken into consideration, i.e. remote vassals being more likely to challenge the liege’s authority or withhold taxes, thereby creating new challenges with respect to ruling larger realms. I sadly suspect this is not the case this time around (with regard to taxes, I note that taxation tours simply give you ‘bonus’ gold rather than actually enabling you to collect gold which is being withheld from you) but would be great if this could be somehow considered in the future.

If game difficulty as it stands is not tweaked with the update, my fear is that it will in fact be harder to roleplay - a desire to tour because it’s fun (because, e.g., it provides something to do / more content) is not as immersive to me as, e.g., a desire to tour as a reaction to the world around me, in order to head off potent threats to my realm which would otherwise pose a greater difficulty than they do currently, with the fun emerging naturally from dealing with that challenge. Ultimately, to the extent possible, I want to feel like a Medieval ruler, not a person playing a computer game.

Don’t get me wrong - I am very much looking forward to the update (and have been since last week’s announcement), and of course all my concerns above may be dealt with by tweaks to balance, the way vassals work etc. I just wanted to try and articulate my thoughts on this further because I think these new mechanics have so much potential!

 

[Cooleatack]

The incentive to Tour is that Tours are rewarding and fun, and the rewards can help you out in various circumstances. I don't believe it is good or necessary to arbitrarily punish the player for not participating in Tours, players should participate in an activity because the activity is fun to do.

Much like how Hunts and Feasts and Pilgrimages are all optional, whether or not you need to tour will depend on your circumstances. A Tour will likely be pretty vital if you've just ascended to the throne, getting those unruly vassals in line and out of factions against you.

The realm should not want to be stable, and you should want to do activities/tours, because they are a tool to combat this AND they are fun. I love cake, but after two slices, I don’t need more cake. Our dopamine receptors only need so much fun. If the tours/courts/events/activities can be used to creatively solve problems, now THAT gives you the real dopamine shot, because you have to WORK for it. Adding 100 fun (and yes, they’re surely fun, good job) mechanics, will mean nothing if they’re only fun for fun’s sake.

I think the dev team should take a look at psychology to understand why something is fun, and why something stays fun. What you are describing is a purely hedonistic way of playing. That gets stale. There is always a reason behind wanting fun. You are filling a need. Be it for interaction with others or making life less mundane, wanting to smile, building experiences.

This translates to gaming mechanics too. A cookie clicker is very fun too, until the novelty wears off, and you never touch that repetitive addictive thing again, and question your life decisions. Do you see what I mean? Saying someone should do something, because it’s “fun” is not a reason. If that is the design philosophy, then I think a more structural rethink is in order.

 

[pbw-410]

This is a very good point, difficult succession are often lacking ways to handle the general discontent. Right now you just press pause and frenetically marry everyone with everyone to get alliances or bribe you entire treasury out. Now you would instead plan a Great Tour to manage the succession, for a cost relatively similar, but way more entertaining! So for this particular case, it seems very handy and we'll thought.

However as the balance is right now, once you passed the critical cap of succession crisis, your reign is a pretty leisurely stroll for the next 40 years, so you might never have to ever press that button.
Others activities indeed are optional but they are an handy way to lose stress, so they're not *that* optional.

This said, if i want to be fully honest, i sometimes hold feast and hunts because I want the occasion to get friends, farm those hunter/feast traits, and get prestige. Thus these grand tours would perfectly replace those events with a lot of fun !

So these events will certainly fully blend with our actual gameplay, but will not answer the general problem of kingdoms and empires getting too much stability from their own weight. That's a kind of worrying subject because Grand Tours were a very important part of great realms for politics and keeping such a large empire together, and right now great realms are just a "look at your ruler becoming obese " experience.

I think this is the key point - tours added as an extra realm management option without corresponding maluses for not touring will still be great fun, situationally useful, and overall a fantastic addition that I can't wait to try out!

However, it also seems to me that there is an opportunity here to kill two birds with one stone, and use the new mechanics to start to address the critical issue that even with the tools that we have right now stabilising the realm is a pretty straightforward matter, and currently the game does not penalise endless expansion nearly enough to make the game interesting or challenging after a certain point.

As far as I can see, combining a new and worthwhile mechanic that makes realm management easier with a comparable counter-mechanic that makes realm management harder the larger you get isn't making tours compulsory, as feasts/bribes/lower crown authority/more lenient contracts etc will presumably remain as alternatives depending on situation, but instead might both increase the game's realism, as larger realms should be harder to manage, and significantly extend the period in which the game is compelling to play.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I dislike that the Royal Court is so passive. If we are going to connect characters to the map, then visiting a court of your liege/vassals should mean something.

I just said it too, but now is the moment to make a smaller ducal court. These two systems are logically made to be used together. Make me actually visit something, and make petitioning your liege important.

We can have far more court events, now that they are limited by tours and traveling. Instead of only being able to hold 3-4 hold court events, holding court should start a “grand tour” for your willing vassals. You’d say as the king: “I summon my vassals for petitioning” And they can decline or accept, and plan their tour to come see you. THAT is what I would envision for a vassal to liege tour, and would make holding court much more interesting than clicking trough a few random events every 5 years + the odd court event that you almost forget, because the notification is so small.

Instead of catering to the complainers that find the feature too “role-playing”, Embrace that you gave us this feature, and make it more interesting. Build upon it, challenge us. Be bolder.

Thanks for the explaination.
That makes sense. Tying RC and T&T together more would certainly have been cool.

Some people said that Tours not being mandatory to keep vassals in check is a missed opportunity, but i think the devs didn't want to balance the game differently whether or not you own T&T. I assume it'd be really hard to make them mandatory if you have it and not necessary if you don't. They'd do double the balancing work whenever they touch vassal management for every future release, too.

 

[Ixal]

That would be true if an activity was always “downside>benefit” or “benefit>downside” (for instance an activity that simply exchanged 1g for 100g or vice versa) but that doesn’t seem to be true of tours.

But whether a tour is “downside>benefit” or “benefit>downside” will depend on the players situation.

Take a taxation tour for examples. As far as I can tell, the the downsides are:

a) Upfront payment of gold
b) Opinion malus from vassals

and the benefits are:

c) sum of gold greater than the initial outlay at (a).

Without (b), you’d be absolutely right - it’d be a net positive “buff dispenser” that you’d click as often as possible. It’d be a silly mechanic that would make the game easier.

But the inclusion of (b) makes it positive or negative based on situation. If you’re a new ruler trying to stave off rebellion, or you’re trying to sway a particular character for whatever reason, then pissing off those vassals in exchange for a bit of gold is a net negative action in that situation

Same with relaxation tours. If you’re trying to avoid a mental break and have plenty of cash, they’ll be a net positive. But if you’re relatively stress free and/or are struggling for money, it’d be a net negative.

(b) does not matter.
What you describe is pure power creep. You get more tools to solve existing problems. People will usetours when its better than other tools and completely ignore it when its not like holding court, resulting in an overall easier game or at worst another useless feature no one will use.

 

[Ixal]

Thanks for the explaination.
That makes sense. Tying RC and T&T together more would certainly have been cool.

Some people said that Tours not being mandatory to keep vassals in check is a missed opportunity, but i think the devs didn't want to balance the game differently whether or not you own T&T. I assume it'd be really hard to make them mandatory if you have it and not necessary if you don't. They'd do double the balancing work whenever they touch vassal management for every future release, too.

The game will still be balanced differently based on dlc ownership, only that now its either very easy (base game) or super easy (dlc with more things that give you buffs and no additional challenges).

 

[johnty5]

There's also the situation where you hold court just for something to do while waiting 30 years for Empire of the North to pop. Some times it's really just a case of doing something other than starting yet another war. And T&T will soak up a lot more of the 30 year wait than RC will.

Plus I like the random positive/negative consequences of holding court. Most of RC is benign but the occasional chance for something negative to happen or the occasional chance to get a free war against a title is worth doing. Plus you invariably end up displeasing someone while pleasing someone else. Same with feasts, and hunts, it's not all about benefits.

I feel like a lot of people that only do the things that give them an exact benefit in CK3 would have missed out on all the fun, interesting, yet non progressive events in MMOs like WoW and GW. I spent 1000s of hours flying the length of Azaroth just to take part in a 30 minute event that gave me nothing more than a novelty item, or 1000s of hours the other way just to take a screenshot near a interesting geographical feature, because otherwise even a huge MMO becomes boringly repetitive.

I think that side of things comes down to personal preference.

As you say “Hold Court” essentially throws curveballs (of varying degrees) into your game. Personally, I’d prefer the game to throw those curveballs at me at random inopportune moments and me have to deal with them rather than me having to deliberately seek them out myself. That’s why I’d like there to be some mechanism that forces me to hold court every so often.

That’s just me though.

 

[johnty5]

(b) does not matter.
What you describe is pure power creep. You get more tools to solve existing problems. People will usetours when its better than other tools and completely ignore it when its not like holding court, resulting in an overall easier game or at worst another useless feature no one will use.

I don’t understand why you think (b) doesn’t matter.

 

[Meka66]

The realm should not want to be stable, and you should want to do activities/tours, because they are a tool to combat this AND they are fun. I love cake, but after two slices, I don’t need more cake. Our dopamine receptors only need so much fun. If the tours/courts/events/activities can be used to creatively solve problems, now THAT gives you the real dopamine shot, because you have to WORK for it.

I think this is the key point - tours added as an extra realm management option without corresponding maluses

I have not at any point in this thread claimed that we are not touching game balance surrounding realm stability and vassal opinion. Obviously when there are new mechanics or tools introduced to the game, balance has to be adjusted to accommodate and we have whole internal processes dedicated to exactly this; playing the game, running overnight AI games, etc.

All I have said is that I'm not going to force you to go on Tours. That literally just means I'm not going to make a random event that makes everyone hate you. It doesn't mean there won't be incentive to go on Tours or that we won't touch realm stability balance.

 

['Ciusi]

It's more of a "buy this dlc to have content forced on you" aspect that would suck.

I don't understand this point of view. For example, Reapers Due for CK2 brought epidemics that basically had no positives for the characters, they brought a lot of negatives, risk of death or even game over. The player had to fight those negatives, monitor the spread of the disease, build hospitals, sacrifice infected people, sometimes even his own family... Everyone who played the game with this DLC had this content forced on them. If someone didn't want to have that content, they didn't have to play this DLC. But the content itself was complex, balanced, and presented new challenges. The point is to bring content that I will have to do, but that will also be fun to do (holding court is not, tours look like they could be).

This is not a criticism of TaT, on the contrary, the mechanics presented in this DD are very interesting (I see travel as the basis for future trade routes and nomads) and I'm very excited for new content. But many players find the game very easy, and adding new challenges at least as a game rule compatible with achievements would definitely be a plus (I understand that if tours would be mandatory, they would have to cost less gold).

 

[Cooleatack]

I don’t understand why you think (b) doesn’t matter.

Because you put your diplomat on improving court opinion, send gifts and useless artifacts to powerful vassals, give a few of them a court position if needed, marry your kids for alliances, sway your spymaster, and maybe put out a few fires here and there for five years, and you’re good to go for 60 years of stability.

Succession is pretty interesting, owning an absurdly massive multicultural realm is trivial. That should not be the case, but is now. An opinion malus means nothing if I can even mitigate -100 with increasing bonuses from fame, devotion, gold, dynasty, court position, levies, cultural aspects, technology, scheming, etc, etc.

You can even have rivals whose family you’ve decimated at +100 opinion with a good diplomatic focus. Adding a tour on top of that without increasing the difficulty of keeping a large realm, is just another bandaid on a non-existent wound. A beautiful and fun bandaid with dinosaurs and space wizards mind you!

 

[johnty5]

Because you put your diplomat on improving court opinion, send gifts and useless artifacts to powerful vassals, give a few of them a court position if needed, marry your kids for alliances, sway your spymaster, and maybe put out a few fires here and there for five years, and you’re good to go for 60 years of stability.

Succession is pretty interesting, owning an absurdly massive multicultural realm is trivial. That should not be the case, but is now. An opinion malus means nothing if I can even mitigate -100 with increasing bonuses from fame, devotion, gold, dynasty, court position, levies, cultural aspects, technology, scheming, etc, etc.

You can even have rivals whose family you’ve decimated at +100 opinion with a good diplomatic focus. Adding a tour on top of that without increasing the difficulty of keeping a large realm, is just another bandaid on a non-existent wound. A beautiful and fun bandaid with dinosaurs and space wizards mind you!

I agree that CK3 is too easy. I’d like to see harder difficulty setting and/or game rules that make it harder.

But that’s a separate point from “do tours make the game easier”.

It’s perfectly possible to believe that CK3 is too easy and also believe that tours won’t make it easier.

 

[boorkie]

I have not at any point in this thread claimed that we are not touching game balance surrounding realm stability and vassal opinion. Obviously when there are new mechanics or tools introduced to the game, balance has to be adjusted to accommodate and we have whole internal processes dedicated to exactly this; playing the game, running overnight AI games, etc.

All I have said is that I'm not going to force you to go on Tours. That literally just means I'm not going to make a random event that makes everyone hate you. It doesn't mean there won't be incentive to go on Tours or that we won't touch realm stability balance.

I like this answer

When you think about it even stuff like declaring war, having a council, holding court etc are never mandatory but instead you either have inconvenience of not using those mechanics or you don't reap the rewards (which come with certain risks)

EDIT: @Meka66 why wouldn't your vassals that are either powerful, friends, allies, arrogant etc lose some opinion if you don't visit them? Maybe not all the time but an occasional event where they invite you and you have to decide to visit them or ignore them?