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Dev Diary #131 – CKIII University 101

Opening Remarks​

Good afternoon, and welcome to your first class of the semester! My name is Dr. Areysak, and I’ll be your “CKIII University 101” lecturer.

I already see some raised hands. You, in the first row, ask away.

“Why a University Activity? What does it have to do with Wards and Wardens?”

This is a very interesting question. During the early development of Wards and Wardens, talks of hostages’ education led us to a realization: everything that could influence a character’s education trait happens during childhood. Once a character reaches 16 years of age, they are locked out of any further improvement! And if the player character isn’t directly responsible for the education of their heir, a player can find themselves inheriting an already adult heir character with an education trait they have had no way to influence.

The University Visit activity is the solution we have chosen to open up new possibilities to the player to influence their character’s personal growth. Therefore, as a first aim, it fulfills a gameplay need; secondly, it allows us to expand upon one of the Middle Ages’ many successful inventions, Universities; thirdly, we got to add a new activity!

When we talk of Medieval Universities, we are immediately led to think of the famous names of Western Europe, such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Bologna. The name “University”, in fact, comes from Latin and was born to describe specifically the communities (= universitates) of Latin-speaking teachers and students that congregated in these European cities. However, similar institutions existed all over the Old World. Particularly famous are the Indian “universities”, such as Takshashila and Nalanda; the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was one of the most renowned centers of studies of its age, and Madrasas schools were widespread throughout the Islamic world. In this period, it’s also often difficult to separate, as we would do today, between lay and religious centers of studies, since Christian cathedrals, Muslim mosques and, in particular, Buddhist temples were themselves libraries, scriptoria (i.e., where manuscripts were copied), and educational institutions, or had these institutions develop in their immediate vicinity.

The Activity​

Let’s now have a look at the activity itself, though!

The University Visit is a minor activity that adult landed rulers can always initiate, as long as they have the gold! To keep it in line with the pre-existing decision to Go to University, it is quite expensive. To keep the challenge balanced, the final cost is dynamic (like with all activities) and changes with your tier and era.

image8.jpg

(Activity selection interface showing the University Visit)

The activity takes 6 months, and can only be started once every 20 years, and only once per location.

In order to Visit a University, you have to select a valid location in your diplomatic range and travel there.

image9.jpg

(Activity destination selection interface)

You might have noticed, however, that not all valid locations are University seats. As discussed above, large religious centers were often centers of study too, and have been included as potential destinations.

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(The tooltip of a large religious center)

Being a minor activity, the choice of intents and options is limited but flavorful.
There are only two intents available, but they represent two contrasting approaches to your university experience, and will significantly change both your approach to your studies and the results you can achieve. In fact, every activity event will have at least one special option unlocked by each intent!
“Study Hard” is quite self-explanatory: you went there to study, and study hard you will, no matter the stress cost you’ll have to pay! You try to make the most of your time at University, in order to maximize your chances of success at the end of the activity and increase your rewards.
In fact, the results (and rewards) you obtain at the end of your studies are measured by a value called “Studiousness”, which is a “success” chance similar, e.g., to a Pilgrimage’s Piousness. The activity can’t fail per se, but the entity of your rewards will depend on this value.

“Goliardic Lifestyle” is a completely different approach, inspired by the European Goliards, wandering students and clerics famous for their satirical poetry (for instance the Carmina Burana) exalting the art of drinking and carnal pleasures. With this intent, your aim is to gain as much first-hand experience of life, both inside and outside the walls of the University, indulging in so-called “Goliardic Shenanigans”. I’ll leave you the pleasure of discovering exactly what your character can get up to; the general idea of the intent, however, is to gain less success chance (and therefore less rewards at the conclusion of the activity), but more immediate bonuses such as lifestyle traits, lifestyle xp, and skill points.

image2.jpg

(Intents view)

On the other hand, we only have one option with 3 levels, which represent how much money you plan to invest in study materials. The option chosen will influence your success chance and final rewards, including an Illustrious artifact! (cost values are still wip)

image13.jpg

(Options view)

image4.jpg

(Arrival event)

As you can see, your level of Studiousness is easily traceable from the activity view. To make the interactions more impactful, we have limited the number of guests, which are only a handful of students and teachers, which will be among the wisest minds on the map!

image6.jpg

(Activity view and teacher’s character view)

image7.jpg

(Event with Study Hard option)

image12.jpg

(Event with Goliardic Lifestyle options)

Be ready to gain a whole bunch of stress! Nobody said that getting a degree was easy…

I did mention that your teachers will be among the most brilliant minds around, and I’d like to stress it again because if you manage to make a very good impression on them…

image3.jpg

(Conclusion event)

You will be able to invite one of them to move back to your court with you!

But hold on, there is something weird with this teacher… What is that?!

image10.jpg

(Teacher’s character view with education trait tooltip)

Is that… A fifth level of the Education Trait?!

YES!

Concurrently with the University Visit activity, we have added a new level to all education traits. This final level will be super rare, and mostly reserved for University teachers and University graduates who already started with the fourth-tier trait.

Rewards​

As you might have guessed from what has been discussed so far, the main reward for the activity is increasing your education trait one level up. However, there is only a chance to succeed in this endeavor! This chance is higher the lower you current level is (i.e., it’s easier to get from tier 1 to 2 than it is from 2 to 3) and the higher your Studiousness level is.

image1.jpg

(Tooltip of Tier 4 of Studiousness with the rewards)

However, even if you were to fail at improving your education, you are ensured to gain a number of Perk points that increases with your achieved Studiousness, an assortment of xp and skill points depending on your event choices, and even an Illustrious book if you chose the most expensive option during the activity setup (and therefore went splurging on rare manuscripts)!

image5.jpg

(A randomly generated Illustrious book)

Conclusions​

This concludes today’s lecture. I hear some buzzing from the end rows, are there any questions?

“But that’s not how Universities worked! No ruler would go to University like a commoner!!”

You are, of course, correct. We are perfectly aware of it. However, we believe that the combined bonuses offered by new gameplay possibilities (i.e., improving your character’s education and skills) and the historical flavor of showing a slice of the life at Medieval Universities more than warranted the exception!

I hope you are excited to Visit a University soon!

This is the last Dev Diary before the July break, so it seems fitting to just say:

School’s out! Have a nice summer! And see you all back in August!
 
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Is it possible to pick a different education trait from your original one? Like, I'm a great warlord who want to learn how to manage my enlarged realm, or a diplomat who want to learn some backstabbing - is it possible for me to pick a 2nd education path later in life? After all, a learned man during medieval and renaissance era was supposed to master many field of studies, from academic, literature, art, warfare, etc - and I do want to be something like that.
 
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Portable Grump said:
Which are only a handful of students and teachers, which will be among the wisest minds on the map!
Click to expand...
So if our character has the most learning points on the map they can be a teacher ?

And again if our character has the most learning points on the map wouldn't that make them have a higher chance of succeeding in leveling up the from t4 to t5 ?

Loved the activity!

Another thing that may be worth mention is... since we're a ruller that is "changing history" maybe .... should we be able to build a university in "any" county ? with a price for that tho (not in every county but in your capital... could even be something that is only possible in every 10-20 even 30 years or so... so that it would be possible to make a russian or african or norse uni)
 
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Renarin said:
So, this is a common trope, and one that's historically incorrect, but it's worth talking a bit about it's origins (at the very least as a demonstration of why reactionary forces can never "truly" be traditional as a result of having to adapt to present circumstances).
Following the medieval period, you have a lot of war and instability as a result of the wars of religious reformation, but you also have increasing centralization under increasingly absolute monarchs. You also have the printing press lowering the cost in time and labor to print books coinciding with an expanding middle class with members who could produce and consume such books. This resulted in an intellectual subculture deeply interested in politics, who then had considerable influence on their cultures. We call this the Enlightenment. Now, Enlightenment thinkers started to favor ideas about Rule of Law and expanding the rights of the public and such, and generally favored the idea that society ought to personally enrich its members (not entirely literally), generally though some kind of enlightened monarchy (as who else but the king can/will reign in those corrupt nobles and oligarchs!) and in some more radical cases through a more democratic society. One of the goals of the Enlightenment is the idea of broad public education, as enriching the minds of the peasants would hypothetically lead to them wanting to be enriched in personal rights and agreeing with the Enlightenment philosophers. This ideal is something that, not untouched or unalloyed by other forces, has been passed along more or less to our culture.
As a result of all this, we tend to take for granted the idea that education means empowerment, and that is a threat to tyrannical oppressive forces. To what extent that's just universally true of education vs it being a result of our educational system being influenced in part by the goals of the Enlightenment is difficult to say, though it being not entirely one or the other seems likely (it is, after all, rather difficult to see the English Boarding School system of the 50s as a font of antiestablishmentarianism). It is also the case that modern tyrannical oppressive forces take this for granted on some level, as they too live in the wake of the Enlightenment! Therefore they occasionally seek to control, subvert, or suppress educational systems to prevent that kind of empowerment that we desire. At times this might coincide with the interests of other institutions of the society (including religious ones) and at times went against it (Play Vicky3). And since we see the rulers of Medieval Europe as oppressors, it is rather easy to import this modern authoritarian behavior onto them and the Church that is so entangled with them (though the Church in particular also gets some extra spicy attention because of Early Modern Anglosphere demonization of the Catholics to help cement the independence of the Anglican Church. Like, there's a lot of wacky conspiracy theories to that end).
But of course that's hopelessly anachronistic! Leaving aside that our ideas about oppression differ from an Enlightenment Philosopher's which differ from an 11th century peasant's, the idea of personal empowerment through education leading to a more (by some definition) liberal society could not be directly institutionally opposed or inverted because, as the Enlightenment hadn't happened yet, that particular idea hadn't been invented yet! Education was, of course, very limited amongst the peasantry, though enough could read, do arithmetic, and write that as a community they could get by. Amongst the upper classes (and wealthier folks, particularly amongst burghers, who could afford to occasionally do upper class things) varying degrees of higher education were more common, particularity with the rise of universities (it is also worth noting that these institutions were religious even when educating secular folks, something that is also true of centers of learning in Antiquity. Despite what people seem to assume, the Romans were not secularists!). The overall attitude during the Medieval period was probably nearer in broad strokes to the Enlightenment view that more education = more good, though not for the same reasons in many ways (and this isn't so strange, the Enlightenment grew out of the Late Middle Age's aftermath after all). However, when it comes to the idea of institutionally educating the peasants, that's another story. Keep in mind the amount of energy it takes to give someone even a basic education, and add to that the fact you would ideally do so when they are young and moldable, and so also need to be taken care of at the same time. The responses you'd get would probably range from 'why commit to such an egregious waste? It's not like they need it' to 'I wish, then they would be better Christians knowing better than to fall for these silly heresies and/or wouldn't need to be micromanaged so much by their betters' (note again the common assumption with the Enlightenment philosophers, 'if only the peasants were more literate they'd agree with me!'). Now, there were seemingly some attempts to educate the broader peasantry, such as what Alfred the Great was trying to do, but they remained fairly limited in practice. And if you for some reason wanted to actively limit education, it's already done for you. Serfs (though not free peasants) were forbidden from joining religious orders, which of course limited their literacy, but this was a side effect of controlling their labor and keeping them from 'getting away' rather than an ideological objective. A big part of it, without the impetus of the Enlightenment, came down to cost-benefit analysis: if you can only afford to educate a limited number of people, would you educate a small portion of the peasants that 'don't need it' or the leadership types that need education and will be leading/instructing the peasants anyways? It is really that kind of economic issue with education that the Enlightenment sought to break us out of by making its acquisition a moral right that the state should expend resources on, to create citizens and not just laborers. Lucky us that other crass economic interests have never impacted and are not currently influencing our educational systems!:)
Click to expand...
Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this. It means a lot to have someone go out of their way to teach me not only how things truly were back in the day, but why and how the notion of "the church wanted to keep the populace ignorant" came to be.
You went above and beyond, friend, and I salute you for that.


PS: Also, I couldn't help but notice your username, am I in the presence of fellow Stormlight Archive fan?
 
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I really hope then now we need to force our kids to learn latin and so they have to speak latin so when they went to a european university they will have to use it. poor heirs will have some stress before learning the language but it will be fun if in Europe the kids have to know latin as a requerment maybe it can shift even in RL it happend in the 17th century but somehow Latin as a language even its a "death language" would get some relevance.
 
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Al Davoodi said:
I really hope then now we need to force our kids to learn latin and so they have to speak latin so when they went to a european university they will have to use it. poor heirs will have some stress before learning the language but it will be fun if in Europe the kids have to know latin as a requerment maybe it can shift even in RL it happend in the 17th century but somehow Latin as a language even its a "death language" would get some relevance.
Click to expand...
Learning Latin would be extremely important for Catholic clergy, but I am not sure how many medieval rulers knew Latin. Some scholarly types like Alfred the Great would know or try to learn Latin but I am not sure about others.
 
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Renarin said:
So, this is a common trope, and one that's historically incorrect, but it's worth talking a bit about it's origins (at the very least as a demonstration of why reactionary forces can never "truly" be traditional as a result of having to adapt to present circumstances).
Following the medieval period, you have a lot of war and instability as a result of the wars of religious reformation, but you also have increasing centralization under increasingly absolute monarchs. You also have the printing press lowering the cost in time and labor to print books coinciding with an expanding middle class with members who could produce and consume such books. This resulted in an intellectual subculture deeply interested in politics, who then had considerable influence on their cultures. We call this the Enlightenment. Now, Enlightenment thinkers started to favor ideas about Rule of Law and expanding the rights of the public and such, and generally favored the idea that society ought to personally enrich its members (not entirely literally), generally though some kind of enlightened monarchy (as who else but the king can/will reign in those corrupt nobles and oligarchs!) and in some more radical cases through a more democratic society. One of the goals of the Enlightenment is the idea of broad public education, as enriching the minds of the peasants would hypothetically lead to them wanting to be enriched in personal rights and agreeing with the Enlightenment philosophers. This ideal is something that, not untouched or unalloyed by other forces, has been passed along more or less to our culture.
As a result of all this, we tend to take for granted the idea that education means empowerment, and that is a threat to tyrannical oppressive forces. To what extent that's just universally true of education vs it being a result of our educational system being influenced in part by the goals of the Enlightenment is difficult to say, though it being not entirely one or the other seems likely (it is, after all, rather difficult to see the English Boarding School system of the 50s as a font of antiestablishmentarianism). It is also the case that modern tyrannical oppressive forces take this for granted on some level, as they too live in the wake of the Enlightenment! Therefore they occasionally seek to control, subvert, or suppress educational systems to prevent that kind of empowerment that we desire. At times this might coincide with the interests of other institutions of the society (including religious ones) and at times went against it (Play Vicky3). And since we see the rulers of Medieval Europe as oppressors, it is rather easy to import this modern authoritarian behavior onto them and the Church that is so entangled with them (though the Church in particular also gets some extra spicy attention because of Early Modern Anglosphere demonization of the Catholics to help cement the independence of the Anglican Church. Like, there's a lot of wacky conspiracy theories to that end).
But of course that's hopelessly anachronistic! Leaving aside that our ideas about oppression differ from an Enlightenment Philosopher's which differ from an 11th century peasant's, the idea of personal empowerment through education leading to a more (by some definition) liberal society could not be directly institutionally opposed or inverted because, as the Enlightenment hadn't happened yet, that particular idea hadn't been invented yet! Education was, of course, very limited amongst the peasantry, though enough could read, do arithmetic, and write that as a community they could get by. Amongst the upper classes (and wealthier folks, particularly amongst burghers, who could afford to occasionally do upper class things) varying degrees of higher education were more common, particularity with the rise of universities (it is also worth noting that these institutions were religious even when educating secular folks, something that is also true of centers of learning in Antiquity. Despite what people seem to assume, the Romans were not secularists!).I remember finding a great site actually with some essays which helped me to understand the true centers of the knowledge in Antiquity. The overall attitude during the Medieval period was probably nearer in broad strokes to the Enlightenment view that more education = more good, though not for the same reasons in many ways (and this isn't so strange, the Enlightenment grew out of the Late Middle Age's aftermath after all).Here is the site https://gradesfixer.com/ it really helped me in many ways and made me rethink the way I study.Education and studying is really important nowadays as it's showing your intellect and how good you can integrate in the society.However, when it comes to the idea of institutionally educating the peasants, that's another story. Keep in mind the amount of energy it takes to give someone even a basic education, and add to that the fact you would ideally do so when they are young and moldable, and so also need to be taken care of at the same time. The responses you'd get would probably range from 'why commit to such an egregious waste? It's not like they need it' to 'I wish, then they would be better Christians knowing better than to fall for these silly heresies and/or wouldn't need to be micromanaged so much by their betters' (note again the common assumption with the Enlightenment philosophers, 'if only the peasants were more literate they'd agree with me!'). Now, there were seemingly some attempts to educate the broader peasantry, such as what Alfred the Great was trying to do, but they remained fairly limited in practice. And if you for some reason wanted to actively limit education, it's already done for you. Serfs (though not free peasants) were forbidden from joining religious orders, which of course limited their literacy, but this was a side effect of controlling their labor and keeping them from 'getting away' rather than an ideological objective. A big part of it, without the impetus of the Enlightenment, came down to cost-benefit analysis: if you can only afford to educate a limited number of people, would you educate a small portion of the peasants that 'don't need it' or the leadership types that need education and will be leading/instructing the peasants anyways? It is really that kind of economic issue with education that the Enlightenment sought to break us out of by making its acquisition a moral right that the state should expend resources on, to create citizens and not just laborers. Lucky us that other crass economic interests have never impacted and are not currently influencing our educational systems!:)
Click to expand...
o_Oo_Oo_O you opened my damn eyes my friend
 
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Power creep (skill point creep) is really starting to make the mid-late game far too easy -- I would like to recommend game setting options to lower the impact of skill points or traits. I now regularly have rulers with at least 20 in every skill and the university mechanics added here will only make that crazier.

Thanks for considering.
 
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This game is becoming more and more like Sims, and I'm not really sure how much I like that. This will probably make some players happy, and I guess the more in the game the better. Though, I'd really appreciate some focus on realm management, statecraft and all the (to me) more interesting stuff than medieval highschool.

That and some much needed historically grounded events would also be very welcomed. This could be everything to revolts to disasters and what not that you'd have to react to.
 
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Will this inflate skills like it did in CK2 with secret society? When your education/primary skillvalue to be concidered "decent" went from 15 to 25? When you had to go all in with your society to not be weak and fall behind?

I love being able to upgrade my education trait
 
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I only hope for two things: Passivity and Selection. Now hear me out:

Passivity:
- Don't make the university duration too bloated with events and micro-management. It flows so much better if the duration can just be played through on max gameplay speed, only stopped briefly at some key event-chains to make specific choices, while otherwise only serving some minor stat increase in return for monthly expenses to stay there. The university serves the game, it's not the game.

Pre-selection to focus
- Allow the character to focus on what they want to prioritise. As in, "Stewardship education and what it means to be a good ruler." The game then prioritises stewardship by default while also delegating some minor stat points to the other areas. Again, mostly passive. You make the basic selections like with pilgrimages and then let your character handle it there, but without being as intense with events. Keep it active at selection, mostly passive at the unfolding EXCEPT FOR:

Events:
The only events that should be active are a few pop-ups here and there. As in getting a crush on A "I think I like A..." (a lowborn) and then "Nah, I like B more" (emperor's daughter), which if you choose B, allows you to propose to the emperor's daughter. But be warned, even if she says yes and true love sparks, the wrathful emperor may find out about the pregnancy, and threaten her/invest in spies to find out it was you (or your son who did it off-screen). Your choice is then either to blind and castrate yourself/your son OR ELSE the emperor will declare war and do it himself. These are some spicy events that could happen, and would be influenceable by the characters' traits and the decisions you take while not being jarring and distracting from the actual gameplay.

Other suggestions:
- Make going to university an active decision that can be undertaken any time, ~2 years on average with 10 knowledge to complete one level of advance i.e from misguided warrior to tough soldier, with misguided soldier to brilliant strategist taking on average ~6 years, slower or faster depending on knowledge and genius and traits (laziness). Meaning, you can be 16 and go to university, or you can be 70 and still drop in.
- Make studying require a regency unless intelligent or genius. But you can quit and go back any time if the realm needs you without losing progress, only slowing down your education and gaining stress. Meaning, once you're admitted, you're in for life for the simplicity of gameplay mechanics and may continue any time at your own pace, and explains run-in wit 20, 40, and 80-year-old students alike.
- Add university grandeur levels like with court, where the highest universities are prioritised with wandering professors and the most brilliant and richest students. Since studying is a lifetime effort, reduce the yearly seats for each university to 5. Meaning, to get in #1 university, you either have to be the owner's son (guaranteed slot), high of nobility, such as the emperor and be admitted based on prestige, a prominent cardinal based on piety, or very rich and donate the largest sum to the university. If you fail, you can either apply again next year or go to #slot university you were admitted into based on the other applicants. Employment in higher universities is possible for wandering professors based on their stats, but for students, the only way is to leave your current university and re-apply again.
 
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