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Dev Diary #129 – Post Release Update Extra Content

This Dev Diary will talk about some of the extra content coming with our next post-release update, 1.9.1! The update will of course also include a ton of fixes and tweaks, as we’ve been monitoring all the ways you’ve been playing with the big 1.9.0 update and the Tours and Tournaments DLC.

Points of Interest​

Hi everyone! I am Daan, also known as Joror, and I am a programmer on the CK3 team.

It is I, le Joror​

First off a little background info about me so we’re no longer strangers: I have worked at Paradox for over five years, and in a couple of different roles. First in our online department (DevOps) as a software engineer and Developer Relations specialist, then as a Clausewitz Engine programmer and tech lead, and finally I have been working in the CK3 team as a programmer!
Before joining Paradox I also dabbled in making mods and modding tools for Paradox games - which has helped me a lot in understanding how the games work from the outside, before moving to the inside.
I am Dutch, like cats, fancy beers, the occasional Goth party, game-jamming, and in general games of all varieties!

Resurrecting Darlings​

Making games is hard - it is a space where ideas are easy, but time is short, and success is measured by a graspable but fickle thing called ‘fun’.
So when developing, we design, build, evaluate, and cut. Many ideas fall by the wayside during each of those steps, including some personal darlings. Often not because the ideas are bad, but because there is not enough time, or they would be too risky, or… one of many other reasons.

Luckily, we also bake various ways into our process that give us space for personal agency and creativity! And one such way is PDT - Personal Development Time.
This is dedicated time in our busy schedule where every developer can work on improving their skills in an area of their choice. And (after checking with leads) we can also work towards adding ‘darling’ features or ‘pet peeve’ fixes that can make it into the game.

The “Points of Interest” travel system is such a feature! It’s also the reason why it is in a post-release update. Of course, it is not just a one person effort. Lovely icons and GUI elements were added by a crafty Artist, code was reviewed by discerning Programmers, the user experience checked for consistency and purpose by a UX Designer, its rewards evaluated for balance by a Game Designer, the end product tested by perceptive QA, while being supported by a whole range of other disciplines that make the work environment organized and smooth.

A Travel Carrot: Points of Interest​

While working on Tours and Tournaments, one of the main systems I was involved in was the Travel system. For a little dev-insight, this is what route planning looked like early on in the process:

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A screenshot of an early state of development of travel route planning, with different colors and icons.

We added Danger as one of the main ‘friction’ mechanics of travel, where players get to make planning decisions and have reasons to change their route. But Danger is mostly a ‘Stick’ - a punishment if you will - and it would be nice to have a ‘Carrot’ as well - a positive reason to change your route!

Enter: Points of Interest - a small system that rewards you for visiting interesting places.
These points of interest will give a reward the first time you visit them during your lifetime. The same also applies to your entourage, so bringing people along will also help them improve.
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An adjusted travel plan which travels through Pisa, a province that contains a Point of Interest.

Types and Rewards​


These Points of Interest are not static locations - but grabbed from the living world of CK3.

All Special Buildings (if they are built) give a Point of Interest based on their type, and give different rewards depending on the Special Building type:

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Visiting the Pyramids is something to boast about.

Special building type rewards:

  • Walls and Forts: +100 Martial Lifestyle Experience
  • A part of a multi-province defensive structure (Hadrian’s Wall, etc): +25 Martial Lifestyle Experience
  • Universities & Places of Learning: +100 Lifestyle Experience in your currently selected Lifestyle
  • Religious Sites & Buildings: +100 Learning Lifestyle Experience, and +100 Piety if they are of your Faith
  • Palaces and Political Buildings: +100 Diplomacy Lifestyle Experience
  • Ancient Wonders & Natural Wonders: +100 Stewardship Lifestyle Experience, and +150 Prestige
  • Economic Buildings (mines, ports): +100 Stewardship Lifestyle Experience

Visiting Capitals of independent Kingdoms and Empires also gives Lifestyle experience, based on their Court Type (if you have the Royal Court DLC) or Diplomacy Lifestyle experience when they do not have a Court Type. Empire Capitals are more rare, and give +300 lifestyle experience points, where Kingdom rank Capitals give +100 points. The capital Points of Interest are updated monthly, so sometimes your information might be slightly out of date.

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The Byzantine Empire has an Intrigue Court - and will give Intrigue Lifestyle Experience when visited

Giving out these Lifestyle rewards is very narratively fitting for expanding the horizons of your character, but also substitutes nicely for the normal Lifestyle events you are not getting while traveling.

Some locations can also trigger a “Great City” sight-seeing event chain, which is actually hooking in a PDT project of another CK3 developer, TrinTragula!

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When you visit, you get a message and the Point of Interest is marked as visited. To seek similar rewards, you will have to visit different places in the future!

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A point of interest has been visited, and the rewards given.

Once you have picked up the Traveler Trait, you also start getting a bit of experience towards the different tracks within that Trait. (Martial and Economic building Points of Interest give Seasoned track experience, where the rest give Wanderer track experience.)

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Getting ‘Seasoned’ travel track experience.

To conclude, here is a snapshot of the Points of Interest that exist in 1066:
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A zoomed out map showing Points of Interest in 1066

To note, this system is part of the Free Update - so no specific DLC required.
Happy sight-seeing in Update 1.9.1.0~!





What’s the Harm?​

Welcome comrades, to the Wokeg section of the DD! I’m afraid I don’t have anything quite as meaty for you as Joror. Instead of lovely new player carrots, we’ll be talking about the oldest and wackiest of all sticks with which to whack the player: death.

Something we’ve generally been a bit reluctant to do in CK3 is to just kill you. Luck plays a decent roll in the events you get and guiding your own luck is an element of many core mechanics, but we’ve been really reticent to have you just… die unexpectedly.

This was a stylistic design choice. It doesn’t really feel great when a random event pops and just kills you mid-run with no set-up or warning — it can be impactful every now and then, especially if it happens at a narratively dramatic time, but it’s just such a quit moment for so many people, and in wanting to provide an experience that felt fair, we over-corrected somewhat and scrubbed a vital element of friction from much of the title.

Whether you’re building your realm, planning marriage alliances, or carefully organizing your succession, these little shake-ups are needed to keep you course-correcting. They’re the firm, unexpected kick to the back of the knee that keeps you guessing and makes you react on the fly.

Not just that, of course, because random death and dismemberment were absolutely staple features of the medieval world too: you might be struck down by a virulent camp disease whilst marching, you might fall from the window of a tall tower, you might die in a house fire, you might be thrown from your horse whilst riding, you might be playing too roughly with another child, you might be old and just fall down the stairs, the list goes on. Paupers, kings, and clergy alike all have to walk the danse macabre eventually, and not everyone gets to go from the traditional big three of honorable combat, succumbing to wasting disease, or expiring from the ravages of age. Sometimes you just die.

The challenge we set ourselves, then, was adding in more ways for death to happen unpredictably without making for an irritatingly frustrating experience. Enter, the harm event.

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Harm events are out to do one of two things: if you’re unlucky, they want to kill you, and if you’re lucky, they want to render you incapable. There generally isn’t a direct gameplay benefit to surviving them, and there’s always a stress cost. Their odds are generally pretty harshly against you, though depending on the event, high skill levels might give you a much better chance of success, and some traits will let you trade stress for negating a specific harm event entirely.

With these, there’s a whole variety of new ways to unexpectedly expire or be reduced to a bed-ridden shell! Fun stuff, y’love to see it. I did also say, though, that we were trying to avoid frustrating rocks-fall-PC-dies situations, and that’s still true. To avoid that, almost all harm events are partnered with a foreboding event — something that fires first and alerts you that hey, you are now eligible to… [spins tombola] … unexpectedly choke to death!

Rather than spring immediate death/incapability on you out of the blue, we alert you that you are now at risk of it. It can now just happen, at any time. In fact, just getting a foreboding event gives you a 50% chance of getting the follow-up harm event within the next 4-8 years, though you’re also eligible to fire it forever after.

For example, here’s a foreboding event:

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And its follow-up harm event:

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The goal is to warn you that a new type of random harm is on the table, so that the notion is playing around at the back of your mind. Maybe it’ll come to nothing, maybe you’ll forget about it, maybe you’ve got just a few short years left to live. Do you want to make rapid preparations for succession? What if it never happens at all? What if you just pushed to do things a little bit faster so the realm’ll be ready for your heir? What if it happens sooner than expected? Lots of little questions to ask yourself. Or, if you’re one of the coworkers testing or playing on internal builds since we added these, lots of questions to menacingly direct to me when I’m making tea, demanding to know when they can stop being worried about impending doom. WAD, I whisper back to them, WAD.

There’s sixteen new harm-foreboding pairs for becoming incapable (well, fifteen pairs and one triplet: becoming incapable due to the march of time vs. your declining health sees your mind weaken, your body start to fade a little, then you risk becoming incapable), twelve new harm-foreboding pairs for dying unexpectedly, and six new events for dying/becoming incapable whilst on campaign.

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Those last six aren’t paired with a foreboding event. Like I said, almost all harm events are, and the exceptions to this are the ones that fire for army commanders. Warfare could kill you quickly and unexpectedly without you ever donning your armor, and history is replete with examples of even fairly hale and hearty warriors succumbing to sudden unexpected disease, poor luck, or taxing environmental conditions, from John Lackland to Richard the Lionheart to Frederick Barbarossa.

Instead, opting to put yourself in charge of an army is your warning that you’re in a dangerous, taxing position, where poor luck might cost you dearly at any moment. High health will protect you from many of the potential ravages of campaigning (with the amount needed going up more the more you age), but the best way to stave off the risk of death outside of battle is to campaign in terrain you have the correct commander trait for.

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Maybe you’re not too big a fan of this change - perhaps you prefer a more predictable world, or you want to have the occasional sudden death but mostly skate on by just fine. For you, we have the Safe & Illusion of Safety settings for the new Random Harm game rule, so you don’t have to deal with this stuff if you don’t want to.

Maybe, though, you’ve been waiting for something like this. Maybe you want more uncertainty in the world, or for life to be just that little bit more mean-spirited than most. For you, we’ve got the Tragic setting, making harm events much more likely generally. If you’d prefer that the tallest blade of grass be the first under the scythe, then we’ve also got the Spiteful setting, which specifically weights up the likelihood for harm events to target proportionally better or more interesting characters. And if you want both, welp, Tragically Spiteful, the single edgiest game rule we’ve added to date, has got you covered.

As long as you’ve got harm events set to anything but Safe, they do run on a cooldown. Players can’t be subject to a harm event more than once every fifty years, and the AI not more than once every thirty per house. These cooldowns help to reduce frustration whilst keeping the threat present, and mean that even playing on Tragically Spiteful, you can still thrive and survive. Just, with the occasional setback.

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… and that’s it from me! Hope you like the harm events, I tried to cover a variety of types from historic references and common causes of death or severe injury either still present in the modern day or mitigated only in the last few centuries, and I’m very happy to be able to resurrect this particular darling for 1.9.1. Have fun with the update!
 
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Random deaths will drastically instabilize the non - player rulers who are already instabilize. Besides, in history almost there were no Europian rulers died ” randomly ” if the random death events will be spammed i would like to turn off on the game rules.
Henry I of England died fairly randomly from "a surfeit of lampreys". It might have been food poisoning, but it looks fairly random.
Henry II of England appears to have died of a combination of stress and disease picked up on campaign against his son Richard Lionheart.
John "randomly" died of dysentry.
Edward IV of England seems to have a stroke.

And although it's out of period, George II appears to have dissected his aorta whilst on the toilet.

So... do those count? If not, what *would* count as dying randomly for you?
 
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when will this update, along with the bugfixes be released?
I would also love to know this! I see the devs haven’t engaged with questions about release, I presume no solid date is set. However, can we get a rough estimate as in this week or next? My four day weekend starts on Thursday night and I’d love to know if it’s a save I’ll have to scrap immediately or not…

Also, Ruisuki, given it’s a jump to 1.9.1, it most likely is not save game compatible.
 
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Also an experiment there too: these are our first events that occur specifically whilst/because you're commanding an army (not counting some raid events). We've historically been really cautious about pranging events at the player when they're in an army (largely though not entirely because they cover the map when you're interacting with it in the most detail), and if these are well received, I would really, really, really like to do more with warfare events. As ever, no promises, but man I'd be incredibly up for siege/battle/camping content.

Let's be honest Wokeg, events already cover the map when I'm interacting with my armies, but it's events about the count of Périgord having sex with one of my courtier or Duchess Eleanor giving me a cat. So I think it will not bother players, and even be welcome and be more immersive to have battles and siege events when my rulers is... Figthing in battles or setting a siege.
 
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yo can we get an icon on wards that are being educated in another culture, and another icon for those educated in another religion. Its hard for me to keep track on who I have doing that so i usually set them again just to be sure, probably restarting any progress on it
 
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Random deaths will drastically instabilize the non - player rulers who are already instabilize. Besides, in history almost there were no Europian rulers died ” randomly ” if the random death events will be spammed i would like to turn off on the game rules.

I don't know what you consider a random death, but if I just look at the kings of France, exclude the staggering number of kings who suddenly died of a disease just before, during or after a military campaign and focus on the period (so no Henry II and his famous death in tournament):

-882: Louis III died at 18 years old by smashing his skull against the lintel of a door too low and fell off his horse while chasing the daughter of a certain Germond, who was running to take refuge in her father's house;

-884: Carloman II was wounded in the leg by a blow of boutoir given by one of his vassals during a hunting party and died;

-987: Louis V died of a fall from a horse during a hunting party;

-1116: Philip of France, co-king and heir of Louis VI died when a panicked pig passed in front of his horse, which reared up and crushed the prince;

-1314: Philip IV fell from his horse during a hunting party;

-1316: Louis X drank iced wine while warming up during a game of paume in Vincennes, and soon after was taken ill, he died of pneumonia shortly after...

And these are only the kings, plenty of French lords died... randomly.
 
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Very interesting dev diary, feels like there is a lot of potential with Points of Interest, especially if it is expanded to include more events/event chains related to specific locations such as with the "Great City" event chain that is referenced in the diary. If possible, I'd like to see this Points of Interest system to expand to be able to interact with locations that have permanent county modifiers such as Ancestral/Conquest/Clout Runestones which could provide prestige/renown/piety (Dynasty specific, piety only when appropriate), the Royal Tolls in Balkh which could provide stewardship experience/prestige, post-Iberian Struggle Regional Strongholds which could provide martial experience/prestige, plus whatever other permanent county modifiers may be added in the future. Would be cool to take a tour of your realm, passing by where your dynasty has physically carved their place in history and actually having it be acknowledged by the travel system.
 
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Can we PLEASE get the ability to travel on rivers!!!! There is a reason most settlements started on a river. There are cultures that can raid via rivers yet cannot travel on them. We could see these points of interest more if we did not have to walk everywhere.

And a less likely ask, if I am an Island ruler there should be a bonus to using the water to travel. My Norse island king is afraid to go into the water without highering some stranger to help, when he just got back from raiding all his enemies around the water he calls his. Just like there are bonuses in some cultures to reduce danger in the mountains island kingdom should give a bonus.
 
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Henry I of England died fairly randomly from "a surfeit of lampreys". It might have been food poisoning, but it looks fairly random.
Henry II of England appears to have died of a combination of stress and disease picked up on campaign against his son Richard Lionheart.
John "randomly" died of dysentry.
Edward IV of England seems to have a stroke.

And although it's out of period, George II appears to have dissected his aorta whilst on the toilet.

So... do those count? If not, what *would* count as dying randomly for you?

I don't know what you consider a random death, but if I just look at the kings of France, exclude the staggering number of kings who suddenly died of a disease just before, during or after a military campaign and focus on the period (so no Henry II and his famous death in tournament):

-882: Louis III died at 18 years old by smashing his skull against the lintel of a door too low and fell off his horse while chasing the daughter of a certain Germond, who was running to take refuge in her father's house;

-884: Carloman II was wounded in the leg by a blow of boutoir given by one of his vassals during a hunting party and died;

-987: Louis V died of a fall from a horse during a hunting party;

-1116: Philip of France, co-king and heir of Louis VI died when a panicked pig passed in front of his horse, which reared up and crushed the prince;

-1314: Philip IV fell from his horse during a hunting party;

-1316: Louis X drank iced wine while warming up during a game of paume in Vincennes, and soon after was taken ill, he died of pneumonia shortly after...

And these are only the kings, plenty of French lords died... randomly.
How many kings did England or France have? Let's say 50 and accept 10 of 50 died randomly which is why i wrote almost. Besides, my whole point was i do not want to see randomly spawned events which rampage the game then i saw the 50 years coodown which is reasonable.
 
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How many kings did England or France have? Let's say 50 and accept 10 of 50 died randomly which is why i wrote almost. Besides, my whole point was i do not want to see randomly spawned events which rampage the game then i saw the 50 years coodown which is reasonable.

34 for France in the period, but I excluded many who died suddenly on a campaign (Robert I, Louis VIII, Louis IX, Philippe III... too many to count haha). But yeah, with the cooldown it will probably suits you ;)
 
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Do you get an event or notification if a close family member suffers a harm event? It seems important enough to take note.
 
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I like the points of interest, making the travel system even more interesting.

East Africa is looking rather blank, as ever though. No special buildings, no universities even after all the new ones were added, and just one new mine that starts unbuilt despite even the description stating it had been operating since ancient times. Could really do with something.
 
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Love Cybrxkhan, excellent human, but torturing them brings me great joy, so here we are.


Uh... I can add more struggles too... :oops:
 
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After my third ruler in a roll hitting their 70's without any issue or particular work on my part, I do appreciate the chance for random death.

My main fear is it being overtuned. If it is tunned so the player character, who tend to accumulate a lot of random health modifiers even though trying, dies at a reasonable frequency, then the NPCs (or newer characters) will die like flies. In other words, I like the idea, but it shouldn't be the main point of balance against the easy of accumulating modifiers. Instead modifier and stat inflation should be rebalanced directly as each new expansion gives you new opportunities to gain bonuses.
 
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Could you maybe fix the crashes first? I get that hunting bugs is complicated but maybe fixing gamebreaking bugs should take priority over adding new content, should it not?
 
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Could you maybe fix the crashes first? I get that hunting bugs is complicated but maybe fixing gamebreaking bugs should take priority over adding new content, should it not?
Did you read the DD? The two new features are part of their Personal Developpement Time and the first paragraph says that the update mainly contains bug fixes plus Joror wrote about the process of bug-fixing before talking about his project.
 
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I will be definitely turning on the random death stuff to increase challenge. The fun factor for me in CK2 was the random factor of death and I could be at my strongest with everything planned out and I still wasn't 100 percent immortal or out of reach (I turn off the supernatural stuff so Idk about that stuff but whatevers}. In CK3, I don't have that fear.

As you say in this DD, many of these random occurrences of death did happen for monarchs. It's rumored that King Harold at Hastings was killed suddenly by a stray arrow in the eye. Charles XII of Sweden shot in the head by a random musket ball on the siege parapets surrounding a fortress.

I hope you add more settings like these for us 'hardcore' players in the future. I would definitely like if AI could do more than 1 scheme on the player.
 
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