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CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

What’s this, a dev diary on a Monday?! Yes, it’s true, we’ve moved them to Mondays so they’ll coincide with CK2 streams. The Reaper’s Due has been out for a while now, and I am very pleased with how both it and the free update were received (I wasn’t sure the focus on Death would be so universally appreciated!) As Game Director, I rarely have time to do much coding and scripting anymore, but I did help out with the optimizations and several of the Game Rules. The game is in safe hands though; the current CK2-team has done an amazing job so far!

Work has now commenced on the next expansion and I can already reveal it’s going to be something a bit similar to Way of Life, which I believe I actually mentioned in my previous dev diary. I also promised optimizations, AI improvements and quality of life stuff. Well, the optimizations are done for now, so the next major free update will feature AI and GUI improvements, which brings me to today’s topic; usability.

Now, we are aiming to tweak several interfaces and while I cannot go into much detail yet, I can say that I’d especially like to address the following main areas:
  • Plotting (quality of life)
  • Prisoner management
  • Guardian vs Educator (clarity)
  • More space for Traits and Character Modifiers
There are other things in the works too, but when you’ve worked on a game for so many years you tend to get blind to many usability issues and simply accept them as they are. That is why I’d like to hear from you, our faithful fans, what you find most annoying and clunky about the CK2 interfaces. Are there any actions you find hard to do, or useful information you cannot easily find (or not at all)? All feedback is welcome!

That is all for now; the floor is yours...

Don't miss today's livestream - Medieval Monday with Emil and Doomdark - 16:00CEST on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
 
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A HUGE HUGE HUGE thing would be the ability to add a scroll bar to events for event descriptions / choices, so we can have nice long narrative events without worrying about it being cut off.

Riffing on this: You know the tooltips you get when you mouse over an event option? It would be nice if either:

* The tooltip is "rooted" at the edge of the event dialogue window instead of the cursor, or
* You could "anchor" the tooltip somehow to turn it into a (semi)-persistent window that you can drag around the screen, like the event dialogue window itself.

It's a relatively minor thing, but I'd imagine it would be very handy for people who like to take screenshots to share with others, and the second one in particular would help for those ungodly massive popups that bleed over the edge of the game screen so you can't read the whole thing.

Another thought on a different note: Break up the "traits" section of the character info box so that you have two separate sections: One for physical / congenital traits and illnesses / symptoms, and one for personality, lifestyle, and status traits.
 
Would like to have a clean vassal tab, maybe a checkbox for direct vassals (directly controlled by myself) and all others (bishops,majors etc.) and clarity which ones have to be mollified for succession law change ( a little "eligible to vote" -sign or something)

Same for the court tab, with checkboxes to fade out prisoners,vassals,council members, courtiers only and so on. It's a lot of scrolling up and down here with a full dungeon ;)

And last but not least, a 'God damn, just stay there' - button for troop commanders, so they don't disappear after a while or a few seconds before starting an important battle ^^
 
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I would love to see an option to select different tagging options when marking a character as a person of interest. I always mark someone as a person of interest when I am determined to exact revenge upon them. Other times I just think a character is cool and want to see how things turn out for them. It would be cool to have like three icon options to tag those persons of interest. One for bloody revenge, one for passive interest and one for deep investment and concern.

I think tagging in general could be put to good use. Tagging a vassal who participated in a revolt, foreign rulers who refuse to reimburse you as a merchant republic building trade posts in your realm. Stuff like that.
 
I would like an easier way to assign vassal contracts to specific titles. For example I am an Emperor and I hold the Kingdom of France, as well as the Kingdom of Aquitaine, the duchy of Burgundy is the vassal of the King of Aquitaine. I would like to be able to switch those without handing out the kingdom titles. I'm not sure if that made sense, but just in general an easier vassal system would be great!
 
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I don't have time to read the whole thread right now, so I apologize if this is a repeat: since NAPs can be negotiated with people who don't necessarily show up on your marriage ties list it would be great if those were clearly displayed somewhere. Perhaps in the "Pacts" tab below allies and NAPs there could be a list of potential NAPs? It's always a pain to have a succession and try to remember and/or hunt down all the foreign and domestic connections my extended family has.
 
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I don't have time to read the whole thread right now, so I apologize if this is a repeat: since NAPs can be negotiated with people who don't necessarily show up on your marriage ties list it would be great if those were clearly displayed somewhere. Perhaps in the "Pacts" tab below allies and NAPs there could be a list of potential NAPs? It's always a pain to have a succession and try to remember and/or hunt down all the foreign and domestic connections my extended family has.

I second this!
 
  • Ability to save templates in the character finder and naming them would be a nice quality of life thing, for example creating a "Find wife" template that uses all the filters you have assigned to the template.
  • A notification for when you are able to change a law
 
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Here's a couple more ideas:

I think it would be good if a polygamous character could switch head wife without a random event, though it probably should have a cooldown unless the ruler is arbitrary.

I'd also like to see the option of a tribal Christian being able to choose to keep his concubines despite now being civilized, with that being a law change your ruler can set. Perhaps having the wrong marriage law could cause religious problems, though. Maybe Christians could get polygamy too, though that one would probably cause problems. Unfortunately I don't think Muslims can function without polygamy, they probably couldn't get this, but the assorted pagans probably could.
 
While I like all the new councillor stuff it's annoying that now we have to go through several tabs to change a councillors job. Whereas before we could just click on the council tab. Now it sometimes takes you to the other sub tabs first. Also we should be able to fire secluded councillors with no penalty.

My other major gripe is the disappearing minor title problem. Particularly commanders. The game tells you when they're gone but never who they were or what has happened to them. I would like a notification setting for this. "commander imprisoned/incapacitated/killed etc"
 
Also some indication of what type of councillor a new one will be. Doesn't need to say exactly but maybe a percentage "20% malcontent chance vs 80% glory hound chance" would make picking new councillors more engaging and useful.

A reason for legal imprisonment tooltip would be nice. Half the time I can't remember why I have the option to imprison someone.

This is probably more for the next expansion but I'd also like to see some small events for courtiers with minor titles.
 
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-Being able to drag and drop councillors from a position to another in the council menu.

-Being able to see all the attributes of your councillors in the council menu, with emphasis on the attribute of their position.

EDIT: -In the council menu, a display of the characters asking for a councillor position (strong vassals).
 
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My 4 cents (everyone does it, so why not...) :

Character interface

1)
Issue :

Presence of the court characters and councillors

To do :
Moving the characters and their portraits of the court tab directly into the character interface, like in CK1.
Alternatively maybe moving the tabs from the top to the left and opening them left to right, instead of top down.

Why :
- The court for me feels currently just like hidden in a box and the characters just like some robots to fill spots.
Characters in court would be easier and quicker to see and select than currently hidden in the court tab.
The council members would be easier to identify.
They would also gain some feel of 'presence' and importance.

- The illusion of a castle you look into. Look, these are the guys surrounding you at your court !
Actualy being somewhere and not hanging in open space like a sun at the top left corner.
Though that would probably also require a graphical overhaul of the window.

2)
Issue :

Seeing info for selectable characters

To do :
When selecting a councillor position or a spouse, to have an option to look at a characters' interface of the "select a character list",
just like the "Go to character" option before the big UI change in 2.3.

Why :
To see all information before making a decision and personal touch.

3)
Issue :

The "Go Back to" (in the character interface) button to actually work all the time.

4)
Request :

More intuitive (and actually working) way to change message settings,
especially the conflict between Message Settings and Message Rules.

Cheers
 
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When setting a campaign fund for doge elections and cardinal selection, you have to increment by ten, which can lead to hundreds of mouse clicks just to set one number. So it would be great in these cases (and elsewhere where you have to set a number, if they exist) to be able to just type in a number, or at least to increment each digit separately.

Ctrl+click increments by 100
 
Being this expansion will include GUI updates and other cosmetic improvements how about more options in leader appearance.
Since nearly all of my leaders end up disfigured and masked, perhaps some different mask types based on the focus you took. And why limit it to masks.
Im saying some Bad Arse looking helmets for those with war foci, something comical for carouser's, a halo for your pious types. Maybe some cosmetics for achieving things like Crusader.
I think you get my drift.
 
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Can these two things be considered interface issues?

Councillor missions right now affect characters who are currently present in the province they're stationed in, rather than characters who live there. This can cause an annoying issue with the Spymaster mission to Build Spy Network when used to boost murder plots as targets who are leading troops can be out of the province in a few weeks to months, while the Councillor has to wait a full 6 months, meaning that it can be unnecessarily difficult to murder army leaders.
A solution to this problem could be to have Councillor missions affect all characters who consider the relevant province their home province; i.e. for landed characters their capital, and for unlanded characters their employer's capital.
Another solution could be to simply remove the 6 month delay between Councillor mission assignments. After all, it's not as if the Councillor has any effect when they're no longer stationed in a province. It wouldn't really unbalance them as far as I can tell.
I would definitely be in favour of both these changes.


Pursuing or avoiding armies in war can sometimes turn into a tiresome and ridiculous farce, when everyone has the ability to cancel army movement 1 day before arrival. EU4 fixed this issue by locking army movement and composition for any army that has been moving for half the time necessary to cross into a new province. I think CK2 could very much benefit from that same addition.
 
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Two suggestions, not UI but definitely flavour -

1) One of the first things that stood out for me when i first started playing CK2 was the completely anachronistic outbreaks of heresies. I bought all DLCs in one hit (it was all on special and CM had just come out !) and was surprised and a little annoyed when in one of my first games a Lollard heresy broke out in the 780s ! At the same time, getting a Cathar heresy in 1370 also seems odd - if a heresy gets wiped out then it should be gone for good. If the heresy failed to catch on or was suppressed then the chance of it coming back should be close to nil.

This could be modeled in game simply by introducing start and end dates for all heresies, a heresy that is already on the map might still expand naturally but before and after its listed dates it wouldn't arise randomly.

2) Reduce chances of culture conversion under empires. One of the defining characteristics of empires is that they are deemed to be a collection of kingdoms, each of which will have it's own rules and laws. Historically, kingdoms tend to become homogeneous while empires tend to keep or even promote regional differences. As a simple example look at Greece under the Ottomans - over 400 years of unbroken occupation and Greek culture wasn't reduced or eliminated one bit. Provinces under Rome did all absorb a fair deal of Roman culture, but ultimately this led to regional fusions and not a single culture - saying that Gallo-Romans were the same as say Palmyrans or citizens from Cyrene would be completely wrong.

The rule to effect this would be simple - no culture conversion within an empire, only king tier and below. Thus a Greek Byzantine Exarch might change his local area to Greek, but the Greek Emperor would not.
 
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Reduce chances of culture conversion under empires. One of the defining characteristics of empires is that they are deemed to be a collection of kingdoms, each of which will have it's own rules and laws. Historically, kingdoms tend to become homogeneous while empires tend to keep or even promote regional differences. As a simple example look at Greece under the Ottomans - over 400 years of unbroken occupation and Greek culture wasn't reduced or eliminated one bit. Provinces under Rome did all absorb a fair deal of Roman culture, but ultimately this led to regional fusions and not a single culture - saying that Gallo-Romans were the same as say Palmyrans or citizens from Cyrene would be completely wrong.

The rule to effect this would be simple - no culture conversion within an empire, only king tier and below. Thus a Greek Byzantine Exarch might change his local area to Greek, but the Greek Emperor would not.
Agreed on that one! There could be "Adopting customs of the overlord" as a province modifier, to represent stuff like the outer provinces taking use of your laws, and the upper nobility learning your language. The next step would be adopting religion, and then ideally merger cultures, but that's probably too much work to do in the game. But outright settling the land with your own people should also be a thing, if at the cost of revolt risk, since that's what the Germans did in the East.
 
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