CK2 Dev Diary #25: Man vs Machine

[P-B]

In "Factions" window the members should always be sorted by their levy size. Right now they seems to be sorted by order of joining to faction.
It's very uneasy to click every one of faction members just to find most powerful supporter (in order to soothe/obligate him, or make him a councillor in case of a "Conclave").

In my games it's not uncommon that the most powerful faction member is NOT its leader, so the search is always goes through the whole faction. Or he's just a tribal lord whom you can't neutralise by giving him a council position.

 

[P-B]

It would be amazing for roleplaying to have an opportunity to give the land to non-courtiers. Let me explain:

Sometimes I conquer the land which I don't have intention to hold in my demense. In this case I'd gladly gave this land to its legal claimant. But if the claimant lives in another lord's court, he will almost certainly refuse to move because I'm "unable to press his De Jure claim". Sometimes it makes sense (for example, if claimant has another religion and prefer to be landless instead of serving infidel), but sometimes it doesn't (when it's my kinsman and/or he has only 1 claim, so even if his lord will ever press his claim he will not have any benefit from waiting).

In case the opinion bonus from receiving a title would make the claimant join your court, he could agree to be your vassal with this mechanic.

 

[marceror]

Not so much an interface thing as a graphics thing, but the Varangian model used during the 867 start date has no visible weapon. He just swings at air. The later era version of this model does not have this problem.

 

[Maphibo]

A minor tidbit but... it would be nice if Cardinals and Princes/Princesses had their own portrait and portrait frame, even if they are not technically of a higher rank.

 

[P-B]

"Favourite" characters need their own window. For now the only way to keep an eye on suitable grooms/brides while they are growing is to copy their names to notepad and paste every one of them to "Search" periodically.

 

[P-B]

Icons for "Zeal" and "Cruel" are almost indistinguishable. I played this game for a few hundreds of hours and only now I begin to recognize them intuitively, without looking at name.

It's not a whim, it's really an unfortunate design.

The most lazy solution is this, but it can be done better.

I hope it will help.

 

[P-B]

When player tries to assign his marshal to suppress revolts, the map shows him the lands available to assigning (i.e. his kingdom) in green, unavailable in black. It will be much better if map will show "Local revolt risk" instead: player will continue to see which lands he has under control, but he will also see which land he needs to choose.

 

[StelarCF]

IMO, it would be great if we had more interactivity with battles if our character is commander - board game events come to mind really.

One way to do this would be if we were given the choice to either lead from the front or from the back, and had ascribed to this various events during battles. This could be restricted by character traits - a craven would never lead from the front, while a brave man would never (?) lead from the back.

How could this come into play? Take this situation for example.

Your character has the trait Cavalry Commander - it's a trait I personally generally avoid, since cavalry is generally a smaller portion of the army, so going with light/heavy infantry commander generally seems (to me at least) like a better option.

Now imagine I am fighting a battle in plains, with my character on the left flank, having the most cavalry of the flanks, and is leading from the front. The battle has entered the Melee phase everywhere.

At this point, there could be an event: my character spots a weak spot in the enemy's flank. I get the option to attempt to exploit it or not do so. I choose to exploit the flank. Depending on my cavalry's size advantage/disadvantage, the enemy's composition and traits of my commander and the enemy flank commander (Flanker could be influential here), several things could happen:

A) Enemy gets pincered, takes heavy morale damage, possibly entering Pursue phase
B) My character dies/gets injured, but the charge continues and fails/causes enemy to rout etc
C) Charge is repelled by the enemy cavalry, but without major losses on either side; battle continues as normal
etc.

It would really make combat more involved for the player, without necessarily having to reinvent the whole combat mechanics. It could be smoothly integrated into existing combat mechanics - battle phases, troop compositions, tactics - and yet make the experience so much better. Heck, take the example above - it turns a "meh" trait (Cavalry Commander) into a trait that can allow me to get in there and change the course of battle in my favour.

 

[Steel_atlas]

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

Dont expect an answer but is anything going to be done about map balance especially in the CM start date?

Is it working as intended or will it be addressed at a later point.

 

[Titan79]

Icons for "Zeal" and "Cruel" are almost indistinguishable. I played this game for a few hundreds of hours and only now I begin to recognize them intuitively, without looking at name.

View attachment 208932
It's not a whim, it's really an unfortunate design.

View attachment 208934
The most lazy solution is this, but it can be done better.

I hope it will help.

P-B, I had exactly the same issue as you - take a look here to see how I solved it.

 

[Lord of the Scrubs]

When large factions form it is sometimes very difficult to see all the different characters in that faction - they bunch up a heap and the distance you move your mouse to navigate it is very small. Maybe if you make it have a maximum number of characters per row and then let the faction characters add to a new line (i.e. having two or more rows of portraits for larger factions) - This issue probably also applies to having a lot of children and other places where portraits are displayed in a row.

Also If you could have some way of integrating title details and character details - maybe even just for the main title, as having two different screens can be irritating, especially when you simply want to see the de jure liege of the title. Possibly even having a claimants button and other useful things all on the main page.

Also, if you could search the character list for traits - that would be pretty damn cool, like if you could search for geniuses or diligent/patient people or whatever, rather than having to scroll through the whole damn list - I would be eternally grateful!!!

Also for holdings, when the name of holding is clicked on the little screen on the side (with the list of all the holdings) it shows where the holding is. This is odd as I always expect it to open the building upgrade screen.

Anyway, I still love your game and these are all really minor issues, so I'm not too fussed if they don't get fixed, but I think they would be nice.

PS: Also this isn't GUI related, but I feel that threat decays a bit too slowly - especially if you get 100% threat - also inheritance threat is way too big - maybe if it was 1/2 or 3/4 of the parent's threat?

 

[DrTjr]

I would like it if the "Sow Dissent" button was replaced by a universal version of the "settle tribe" button

 

[munrock]

...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.

How about multiple, draggable character panes each with an individually recorded 'back' button, with actions that open the character pane opening in the newest, or in a new one if a modifier key is being held? And/or the back button has a history pane we can open up to quickly navigate through recently viewed characters? You could even integrate a history browser into the character search tool.

 

[marceror]

After having played Reaper's Due for a little while, a CTRL-Left Click while in epidemic map mode to show where hospitals are built in your empire would be great. I find that it's important to get at least a basic hospital built in every county early, but with a very large empire that's a lot of counties to click on to find where they are/are not built. Expanding the option of the epidemic map mode seems like a good possible solution -- which is the same command use to toggle the trade map mode between the merchant republic and individual patrician families.

On a similar note, it would be great to expand the first page of the ledger to include hospitals. That way you can easily identify which hospitals in your demense are able to receive new construction.

 

[Duuk]

Not UI, but I've always felt it was weird that the spy master missions plot bonus seems backwards. The plot discovery and plot power bonuses seem like they belong on the reverse jobs.

UI: Please "line up" the councillor missions in the same order on all councillors: bonus, bonus, tech. Example: Chaplain's tech bonus mission is in the middle while marshall and steward are on the right. Yes, it's pedantic. I can accept my fault.

 

[Karlmann]

A few points. Not necessarily UI only.

Gavelkind
Please make playing with gavelkind-succsession more reasonable and enjoyable. I would suggest a interface or window like the EUIV negotiate peace window where you can slide/distribute titles between your eligible heirs and you can see the percentages of whatsoever value you may think it would make most sense (holdings/levisize/income/any combination of faktors/etc.). So if you have e.g. three eligible sons the "optimal" percentages would be ~33% for all. The more imbalanced the ratio is the more opinion malus (envy) you generate between your children but also between your vassals (and even courtiers). So 80%-10%-10% should end up in a heavy -70 opinion malus. Also make the AI capable to make good use of these interface to avoid these silly "dashed-to-shivers-realms".

Good historical examples of such an "interface" are the Devisio Regnorum of Charlemagne and the Ordinatio Imperii of Luis the Pious. If you miss to manage your heritage during lifetime "autogavelkind" could occure similar to the "old" system. But i favour that the gavelkind-mechanic would hand out titles by first focusing at sense/realmbalance (no fragmentation) and only therafter consider the "best balance" of title distribution between heirs. That could lead more often to a heavy opinion malus and immediate revoltes either of your allied brothers (e.g. Charles of Westfrancia and Luis of Eastfrancia against his elder Brother) or of your vassals but lead less often to the destruction of the integrity of your "homelands".

Council-Tabs
Please merge the two sliders/tabs for "(your) council" into one. It makes no sense to have two with rather the same context. More than this i would prefere a major overhaul of realm politics to fit more into historcial reality/context. Here you can read the "deeper conversation" of what i have in mind.

If the extendet politics idea doesn't appeal then I imagine the merged "universal council window" as follows: first delete the old (vanilla) window. Then scale the portraits so all councillors who are able to perform a job (marshal, steward, etc.) fit into one row. Place the buttons for the jobs underneath and all conclave stuff in the four corners and/or above the portraits. And then place the other advisors, in smaler propotions, underneath. I would also prefer if we can expand the council (perhaps via law, pressable through fractions) so many/all minor titles can participate. Cupbearer, Commanders, etc. should be integrated as a kind of ministerialia.

Dynasty-Content
More than a game about charakters i think CK2 is a game about dynasties. So e.g. Merchant Republics and Nomades does have their own "flavour content tab" (Clan-screen and Republic-screen) but feudalism lacks of this UI-element. So give us at least more comfort for the dynasty window: blend out different kind of persons (dead ones, landless or landed ones, etc.), sort by different parameters (hires, degree of kinship, etc.) ...

But I personally would go way further. I would heavily love to see a complete new interface (like merchant republics and nomads) where you can "play around" with your dynasty and their branches, perhaps with slots for, let's say, one parent branch and four cadet branches (in sum 5 like merchant families in the republic screen). It would be so much fun if branches could die out and you can continue to play as a minor branch and your coat of arms, name and appearence (culture, religion?) changes by "accident".

I would enable this feature for royal or imperial dynasties only (but you can of course play as a minor branch duke/count). It would be cool too if families could have ancestral seats and/or different manors for each branch like the patrician family palace or the nomadic capitals. Perhaps this could be a possibility to play "landless" nobles/ministerials. Here i think is great potential of expanding game content.

Tribal-Content
In a similar way i would love to have a kind of "Tribal Screen". Core-feature could be relationship between ("vassal") tribes. So tribal "realms" should be more a kind of confedaration of tribes insted of a strictly hierarchical unit. So tribal gameplay become more than a interim solution till you become feudal or patrician. I would love to see the possibility of enjoyable tribal gameplay till the later dates of the game (1200+)

Greetings

Karlmann

 

[Thrake]

Are you aware of this/plan to fix this eventually @Doomdark ?

AI Norse happens to use prepared invasion but never really fight it (Usually they only seem to declare invasion and not fight but sometimes they launch the war but do nothing, probably because it sometimes targets very distant realms like someone in the British isles probably won't consider worthwhile landing troops in Crimea)

 

[m4st3rm_]

Add a visual cue in the rules menu to show which ones have been changed from default.

 

[FrostPDP]

I'm sure I'll be making this suggestion elsewhere in the Paradox universe, but for the sake of this thread I figure I should post it here, as well. I'd really love to see a "levies raised" mapmode, preferably one that also displays the available troop numbers in a given province, even if it's just numbers and not unit-specific.

I made a (mercifully) short video that'll help you understand what I'm talking about, available here for your viewing pleasure:

 

[Pantelwolf]

I would love a button when I select several armies to "load all loadable armies to local ships"
As a Mediterranean ruler I have to select each army separately and load them on the ship and it gets tedious if you have 20-30 armies.