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Dev Diary #158 - Wandering Nobles

Hello there!

It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, so I figured I could give a short presentation of myself. I’m @Snow Crystal , one of the two Design Leads on CK3, and I have been around at Paradox on different projects since CK2’s Holy Fury (my first DLC). It’s my pleasure to present our last entry in Chapter 3, namely, the Wandering Nobles DLC.

Vision​

As we set out to create this piece of content, our primary goal was to see if we could spend more time with the traveling system from Tours & Tournament. It was a system that was generally well-liked internally and externally, and we knew we would most likely be used a fair bit by adventurers (though exactly how that game loop would turn out was unclear at the time). We wanted to continue experimenting with it and see if we could add more content to it in different ways.

Since I have seen some confusion about this, one thing to clarify is that the Wandering Nobles is not a Landless Adventurer DLC. It was made primarily for landed gameplay, and though much of it is also available to landless characters, they are not the pack's focus. In other words, this DLC will not have unique landless features, new contracts, or anything locked to the adventurer playstyle.

Even though I will not go into detail about events, a plethora of new events are spread throughout the different features that will be detailed here, as well as a slew of new travel events. In this event pack, we tied them all into things the player will choose to engage with, see activities, lifestyle, and travel, rather than having them appear seemingly at random.

Lifestyle​


Besides the traveling focus, what you can find in the pack is our first new lifestyle since the game's release. This avenue of content has remained almost untouched since the game was first released, except for adventurer-specific perks in Roads to Power, which we wanted to try and experiment with. It is set up like all other lifestyles in the game, with 27 perks split across 3 lifestyle trees, 3 focuses, 3 traits, and landless perk variants where needed.

One essential philosophy of the new lifestyle tree is that we wanted it to be a tree where you had to engage with it rather than having it simply engage with you. In other words, there are fewer passive bonuses, and most bonuses are gained by engaging in travel or activities. In that sense, we tried to go for impactful effects and bonuses from the perks, but at an opportunity and gold cost. We will talk at length about the lifestyle trees and perks next week, but I wanted to give you a small look at what it looks like.

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Activities​

In the DLC, we have included three activities, each associated with (and unlocked by) one of the new lifestyle trees. They are intended to be about the size of the University Visit we introduced in Wards & Wardens, giving landed rulers more opportunities to travel through your realm or abroad. Two of the new activities are set in your realm, whereas one takes you outside your borders.

When we created these new activities, one of our philosophies was that we wanted them to be deeply tied to each of the lifestyle trees, synergizing in different ways and playing into the strengths of the lifestyle tree. That way, investing in the lifestyle tree opens up an activity that lets you continue to build down that route.

The first activity we will examine is Inspection, where you can choose to travel to a specific part of your realm to ensure that it is well-run. You will be able to decide what parts of realm management you would like to focus on, and if you travel to a border county, you might even get vassalization acceptance from neighboring rulers or claims on their lands.

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Our second activity, the Monument Expedition, involves traveling to a distant city to see its sights. This allows you to visit specific places with Points of Interest, which you’d previously have to drop by as you pilgrimage elsewhere.

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The final activity, the Hike, is one where you can temporarily leave behind the stress of court life and seek the calm of nature. Shy characters, you poor souls who would desperately try to lose stress through feasts, I see you.

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Battle Points of Interest​

As a travel-focused pack, we wanted to include something new for the players to see as they traveled around the map. One I had wanted to include for a while was points of interest focused on battles. These new points of interest will come in two forms: dynamically created ones as particular battles happen on the map and historical ones set up from the start of the game.

For the historical ones, we have some that can be seen in all our bookmarks and others that can only be seen in later bookmarks, like two related to the fight over England in 1066.

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A Toast for Your Travels​

One minor addition to this patch is a new building and court position, primarily for Catholics but accessible by anyone with a new cultural tradition. The building can only be built in Catholic churches by default, but in any city for those who choose to get the cultural tradition. It is intentionally made to have a fair number of county-wide bonuses rather than holding specific ones and opening the new Court Brewmaster Court Position for whoever is in charge of the county.

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Until Next Time​

That was all for this week. I hope you enjoyed this first look at Wandering Nobles. We will look in-depth at the activities and lifestyle perks next week. Until then, I figured I’d show some of the new art we have in the DLC to tide you over.

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Brewing is for Catholics, but can be made available for others with an appropriate tradition. Is this something that can be made available by tenet as well?

Catholicism is a religion, not a culture, so I feel like its mechanics should be gated by tenets.

Also, what does the "Excellent-aptitude Court Positions" note on Expeditions mean? Does it give you good courtiers or new positions? The way it's worded makes it sound like you get new court positions.

Final note: I'm sure this is just a minor oversight, and is already on your to-do list, but didn't Harold Godwinson win at Stamford Bridge?
 
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Will the new battle points of interest be visitable through other traveling means even if one doesn't do wandering lifestyle?
 
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I feel like a 100% chance for the commander trait for an activity can be a tad too powerful though.
 
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Brewing is for Catholics, but can be made available for others with an appropriate tradition. Is this something that can be made available by tenet as well?

Catholicism is a religion, not a culture, so I feel like its mechanics should be gated by tenets.
Not as is right now. It's a very minor addition I added for fun, so it wasn't meant to be a "proper Catholicism feature", by any means.

Also, what does the "Excellent-aptitude Court Positions" note on Expeditions mean? Does it give you good courtiers or new positions? The way it's worded makes it sound like you get new court positions.
It gives you courtiers with great aptitudes in specific court positions that is available to you. So the former.

Will the new battle points of interest be visitable through other traveling means even if one doesn't do wandering lifestyle?
Yes.

I feel like a 100% chance for the commander trait for an activity can be a tad too powerful though.
So the way it works right now is that it gives you a commander trait if you have less than 2, but it is something we can look at rebalancing.
 
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Looks interesting, though I'm confused on why breweries are limited to Catholics religion wise when so many religions use alcohol as an etheogen.

The points of interest seem cool especially being able to visit historical locations. Though it looks like you have Harald and Harold flipped on Victor and Defeated blurbs
 
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Looks interesting, though I'm confused on why breweries are limited to Catholics religion wise when so many religions use alcohol as an etheogen.

The points of interest seem cool especially being able to visit historical locations. Though it looks like you have Harald and Harold flipped on Victor and Defeated blurbs
Oh, you are totally correct, I do. Maybe it's my Norwegian bias coming in.
 
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How will the breweries tradition interface with the trigger that determines alcohol attitude by religion? Stuff like Islam banning it and Buddhism discouraging it.
 
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Not as is right now. It's a very minor addition I added for fun, so it wasn't meant to be a "proper Catholicism feature", by any means.


It gives you courtiers with great aptitudes in specific court positions that is available to you. So the former.


Yes.


So the way it works right now is that it gives you a commander trait if you have less than 2, but it is something we can look at rebalancing.
Thanks a lot!

One last question. Can you visit any point of interest with the Monument Expedition? Or is it limited to a pre-defined list of sights?

Rome and Baghdad are special points of interest for example, with a lot more content than others. So I was thinking that maybe this expedition would be limited only to the greatest cities of the Medieval world? It would be great either way, of course.
 
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How will the breweries tradition interface with the trigger that determines alcohol attitude by religion? Stuff like Islam banning it and Buddhism discouraging it.
I believe it should have a trigger for AI to discourage it.

Thanks a lot!

One last question. Can you visit any point of interest with the Monument Expedition? Or is it limited to a pre-defined list of sights?

Rome and Baghdad are special points of interest for example, with a lot more content than others. So I was thinking that maybe this expedition would be limited only to the greatest cities of the Medieval world? It would be great either way, of course.
It should be every point of interest with a special building within your diplomatic range. Here you can see what it'll look like in the game
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Are Victor and Defeated the wrong way around in the Battle of Stamford Bridge screenshot? Or did I misunderstand what a victory is lol
 
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Are Victor and Defeated the wrong way around in the Battle of Stamford Bridge screenshot? Or did I misunderstand what a victory is lol
Yes, they are the wrong way around and will be fixed.

That looks very crowded, can you zoom in for selection of site?
You can. E.g.:
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So more way to increase "offer vassalization acceptance"... With legitimacy I could conquer all the middle of the map without any war because of this. Even more powercreep now.
Same with the free martials points and traits by adding more point of discovery based of battles, I like the idea of dynamics points based on battle but it shouldn't give much. Maybe we shouldn't know exactly how many points we gain but more put a range betwen 10 and 100 (exemple)
 
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So the way it works right now is that it gives you a commander trait if you have less than 2, but it is something we can look at rebalancing.
I think I automatically reacted this way because it's, specifically, Organizer. As far as I remember, most ways to get it are either conditional or random, but here it's literally lying in the dirt waiting for traveller to get it.
 
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It would be cool if the Dutch, Flemish, and Walloon cultures had "brewing" added to their culture. Maybe an extra court position for this: Abbot Trappist (only possible for a monk).

Extra piety, extra control, and extra gold.

Maybe only possible when you build a monastery, because the title of Trappist is linked to a monastery.
 
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I think I automatically reacted this way because it's, specifically, Organizer. As far as I remember, most ways to get it are either conditional or random, but here it's literally lying in the dirt waiting for traveller to get it.
It's a fair response, so we'll most likely change it before launch.
So more way to increase "offer vassalization acceptance"... With legitimacy I could conquer all the middle of the map without any war because of this. Even more powercreep now.
Same with the free martials points and traits by adding more point of discovery based of battles, I like the idea of dynamics points based on battle but it shouldn't give much. Maybe we shouldn't know exactly how many points we gain but more put a range betwen 10 and 100 (exemple)
You have to put in a fair amount of lifestyle perk points before you get access to it, and it's not a set success chance on being able to get it, and you will only get it for neighboring rulers of one county at a time. So if this is your way of taking over land, I think you could do it a lot quicker with just warring.
Will the new lifestyle get passive experience bonus similar to what the level of education does to other lifestyle trees?
You get it from the traveler trait, and the Wanderer trait path (10% for the trait, and 20% per level in the trait path, to a max of 50%).
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