CK2 Dev Diary #45: The Adjustment Bureau

[plussocram]

Another issue related to Societies is that the subversive religious cults are too invisible. The AI will now handle both creating and running the Secret Religious Cults more effectively. Right now, it can feel as if you are the lone actor in the society, but with the patch your fellow AI members will make an effort to contribute. Also, the general costs of certain actions (like evoking sympathy) have been drastically reduced in order to make running the Society more manageable. We also aim to make the secret religious cult system more dynamic.

I think a way to help them out isn't just lowering the cost in general but lowering it by rank. It should cost less influence to make someone unlanded without a claim to the thrown sympathetic or part of your cult rather then a king which cost the same amount of influence at the moment. Maybe a raise for the amount of influence it currently costs for kings and emperors and a reduce it for counts and claimants with unlanded characters basically being free to try and make part of your religious cult. This would make it so that we wouldn't have only counts and dukes as part of the cult but would have a large number of members trying to influence other members but with few being able to get high ranking officials as part of the cult.

 

[Legal Assassin]

Very disappointing that it'll take weeks to nerf the devil worshipers when a modder successfully posted a mod on steam that did it 3 days after the release. I know, company versus some guy who does it for fun.

Just sayin'. I'm sure y'all need the time to have your coders hunt down things like disappearing titles and broken direct vassal map modes, and if I could be a bit flippant, code the missing content which was advertised, but it seems like the goose-stepping is rampant in your PR department lately.

It's ok to admit fault sometimes, most of your adult, seemingly well educated fanbase seems to appreciate that versus the recent "look the other way and pretend it's not broken till we fix it" attitude.

 

[Leiningen]

It would be incredibly helpful if we had a map mode that showed areas where we have already established a secret religious community. It's fairly frustrating to have to hover over each individual province to see if I've prepared ground there or not, especially when I'm preparing ground across an entire empire.

 

[Tavior]

Not a bug. There is a 5% or so chance of stuff disappearing. Maybe a design decision to reduce artifact clutter, but not a good one.

I would have gone with a list that you can click on to expand and if there are 3 or 4 of the same items, like mercury or other alchemy stuff, just list one instance and show how many of that type you have.

That would completely eliminate most if not all possible cluster issues.

No need for a silly 5% chance of disappearing.

 

[Ixal]

Not sure if that is in game already or not, but what about imprisoning a suspected satanist and torturing him to reveal others. Each tick he would lose health but might reveal the names of a other satanist character based on randomness, traits, remaining health and opinion.
At the same time the stanists get a mission to free the prisoner (or kill him which is more easy but gives less dark power).

 

[Satyros]

Will it be possible to falsely convert to attackers religion if targeted by a Holy War? Or is the lack of such a possibility part of the design philosophy for false conversions?

Really? It's not there?

I thought this was to be the greatest selling point of the last expansion, because it certainly gives some rp-driven decisions mechanical depth and actual substance in game terms, whereas up until recently you needed to "game the system" to achieve some desired results (with education, searching for specific courtiers etc) . Obviously I misunderstood how things worked, I focused mainly on my Horse Lords lately (just bought that expansion as well).

Really?

I'm pretty sure it'll get there, too great a feature not to include eventually.

And since I commented, I would really like to see crypto-religious characters such as persecuted heretics/infidels. This would give the game unprecedented rp-depth, since a great deal of storytelling in this era revolves around religion and (various degrees of) religious characters. Let the little guys shine as well.

I can totally understand and won't whine if it sounds too much of a work to balance properly ( so not everyone all the time is a crypto-something), but oh, the possibilities!

 

[Rags17]

It was mentioned that gifts can be considered invaluable. I'd like to propose a step further: I'd like to "gift" away objects that would be considered insulting to its recipient. Like, say, if battle trophies were a thing, I could send the head of my enemies back to their families.

So much this !

Appoint your rival as Court Jester, make a big show and ceremony about handing him your cheap, poor quality sword, then step back and wait for him to start scheming to have you killed.

With your Spymaster waiting in the wings to catch him in the act !

 

[Novacat]

Then there’s the ability to give artifacts to other characters; it might not be something you folks have clamored for, but it was originally planned to be included in the expansion. It is a fairly simple action that gives you an opinion bonus from the more or less grateful recipient (similar to “Send Gift”.) You can only give away artifacts that are considered valuable by the recipient, so no Christian relics to pagans, etc (this is scripted in a new trigger in the artifacts).

There were so many people asking for this feature, and I am esctatic that the first patch has it. I spent the last few days with a headache trying to figure out how to impliment artifact trading into Elder Kings without bloating the diplomatic interactiton window. Looking forward to it!

 

[Ben84]

Not sure if that is in game already or not, but what about imprisoning a suspected satanist and torturing him to reveal others. Each tick he would lose health but might reveal the names of a other satanist character based on randomness, traits, remaining health and opinion.
At the same time the stanists get a mission to free the prisoner (or kill him which is more easy but gives less dark power).

Really like this idea and just imagine the events:

"For heaven's sake just give me the names of the other blasphemers, you damn son of a demon spawn"
-- "Noooo, never ever..."
"Fine, we'll do the vineboarding. But wait.....you don't need two legs, right?"
-- "Ok,ok..its the duke of burgundy....and the countess of neuchâtel"
"Guard,do your job! We got the information we needed."

 

[Ixal]

Really like this idea and just imagine the events:

"For heaven's sake just give me the names of the other blasphemers, you damn son of a demon spawn"
-- "Noooo, never ever..."
"Fine, we'll do the vineboarding. But wait.....you don't need two legs, right?"
-- "Ok,ok..its the duke of burgundy....and the countess of neuchâtel"
"Guard,do your job! We got the information we needed."

Well you only know their names. Apprehending them might be a bit of a problem.
Not sure if such an information should automatically reveal them as satanists but instead give them a suspected satanist modifier which lowers the opinion of others not my as much and doesn't allow for wars and apprehending.

This would be a nice way to make Dominicans more interesting. Let them be the only one who can torture and follow up on leads.

 

[Fenrir9]

So I'm having a problem My immortal King keeps "vanishing without a trace". I got the event legitimately and beat it. He's now 227 years old. But for some reason He only seems to last one year and then dies. Is there some reason for this or is it a bug? Because I'm very annoyed.

 

[Nick_T]

Any update as to the possibility of Nestorians and Miaphysites getting secret cults? I mean all it would require would be a copy+paste of existing society mechanics and texts from Orthodox, and it makes perfect historical and game play sense to have them.

 

[Coffee Fox]

So I'm having a problem My immortal King keeps "vanishing without a trace". I got the event legitimately and beat it. He's now 227 years old. But for some reason He only seems to last one year and then dies. Is there some reason for this or is it a bug? Because I'm very annoyed.

"Vanished without a trace" leads me to believe your king is being abducted and sacrificed. Can't say for sure though.

 

[Satyros]

"Vanished without a trace also appears as a cause of death if you decline the "eunuch from hindustan" gift-courtier.

 

[TheDungen]

Sure, a hundred years isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but I think that people should be far less accepting of the change if it happened recently and they didnt like it than they would be after a hundred years have passed. There will doubtlessly be tales about the "Good old days", with varying degrees of accuracy, but once it isn't in living memory I think that the grace period where the vassals can try to restore the old law without the council being depowered enough is over. Otherwise, it would make any title that ever has been Elective a liability to hold even if you have no real ties to that era as your vassals would be able to mess that title's laws up far more easily than a title that hasn't been Elective, which would make losing your throne even without the title going Elective at that time a nightmare as the AI might accept a subsequent faction demand for Elective and irrevokably ruin the title for you, if it was tied to the title.

If it instead was tied to culture, it would make it imperative to change culture away from the Elective cultures (provided you don't want to keep that law) and to replace or re-educate your vassals to your new culture because not doing so would make the Elective faction a constant danger. This would mean that a Rajput Sweden that recently changed to Primogeniture and revoked enough council power would be safe from the Elective faction despite its history while a German Mongolia that has no history of being Elective would get an Elective faction even with the council stripped of all rights because they are German and somehow that is more important than everything else, neiher of which makes a lot of sense.


As for locking versus a bias, I still think that a bias gets rather silly after a sufficiently long time has passed, especially as a culture-locked bias would create all kinds of issues. For example, if the heir to a Primogeniture ERE is educated by the Varangians and pick up Norse culture and manages to crush the inevitable revolt from his Greek vassals, the newly appointed Norse vassals shouldn't look at his laws and be more likely to push for Elective than a Greek vassal with the same opinion towards their liege (whether the liege is Greek, Norse, or something completely different), and he himself certainly shouldn't be even slightly inclined to give up a succession law that weakens him unless he is forced to.

Likewise, if half the vassals of an Elective England end up being French, their opinion of their liege (whether French, Anglo-Saxon, or something else) switching from Elective to something else should be met with "How dare he?" not "Well, those silly non-French customs were wrong!", unless they and their liege are joint foreign conquerors, and they should be just as willing to switch back to Elective as the Anglo-Saxon, German, or Danish vassals would be. And if a Primogeniture Castillian Castille gets a bad enough ruler and his Castillian vassals have the option to choose between Gavelkind and Elective, they should not be less inclined to try for Elective than the German vassals of a Primogeniture German Germany would be if their opinion of their liege was the same as the Castillian vassals' opinion of their liege.


Perhaps my first post was unclear as to what I meant, so let me rephrase it:

- William's Norman vassals (whether in Normandy pre-Conquest or created by William post-Conquest), liking William and not being part of the realm pre-Conquest, should not mind him throwing out pre-Conquest laws and seek to restore the pre-Conquest laws because they used to be in effect, not because they are Norman but because they have no ties to the old era, and should not be allowed to get around any normal restrictions on starting factions for Elective.

- The Anglo-Saxon vassals, hating William because he is a foreign conqueror, should find the law change to be bad because he is a foreign conqueror, not because they are Anglo-Saxon but because they have ties to the old era, and might possibly be permitted to try to restore the old laws more easily.

- Any other vassals that were around in England pre-Conquest should be in the Anglo-Saxon camp regarding William's foreign ways being bad and having the option to restore the old order, even if they are Norman. If their opinion vs. William is the same and low enough to join factions, a pre-Conquest Norman vassal of England and a pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon vassal of England should both be equally likely to try joining the Elective faction.

- Any other vassals created by William, even if they are Anglo-Saxon, should be in the Norman camp and should not be getting access to a faction to restore Elective unless the normal conditions are satisfied. However, if the council is empowered enough to make the Elective faction an option, an upset Norman vassal with no ties to the old order and an upset Anglo-Saxon vassal with no ties to the old order should both be equally likely to try joining the Elective faction at the same opinion.

That system is unnecessarily complicated and taxes the game unnecessarily.

Really like this idea and just imagine the events:

"For heaven's sake just give me the names of the other blasphemers, you damn son of a demon spawn"
-- "Noooo, never ever..."
"Fine, we'll do the vineboarding. But wait.....you don't need two legs, right?"
-- "Ok,ok..its the duke of burgundy....and the countess of neuchâtel"
"Guard,do your job! We got the information we needed."

The usual problem with torture though how do you verify the information? He could be making stuff up to save his own hide. In fact the only thing torture is really good for is making someone confess to what the torturer want them to confess. For an example say you want to frame the duke of burgundy as a heretic, then torture is a great tool for making someone say he is.

 

[VoodooEconomist]

Really? It's not there?

I thought this was to be the greatest selling point of the last expansion, because it certainly gives some rp-driven decisions mechanical depth and actual substance in game terms, whereas up until recently you needed to "game the system" to achieve some desired results (with education, searching for specific courtiers etc) . Obviously I misunderstood how things worked, I focused mainly on my Horse Lords lately (just bought that expansion as well).

Really?

I'm pretty sure it'll get there, too great a feature not to include eventually.

It's the issue of implementation - currently the decision to falsely convert is only available when swearing fealty. If it's something Paradox are willing to do it's just the issue of creating a new decision based on the "Convert to attacker's religion" decision that already exists, as well as on the new decision to become a secret believer.

 

[Ruisuki]

Wow this seems like a good update glad to see it doesnt just add to MM. I dont want to wait weeks but at least I got Rimworld to stem the tide.

 

[Agnitio Ex Mach]

When are you going to make it so AI will want to join realms if they're under immediate threat? Also when is the Muslim AI going to be discouraged from blobbing East Africa? What happened to the last fix?

 

[TheDungen]

When are you going to make it so AI will want to join realms if they're under immediate threat? Also when is the Muslim AI going to be discouraged from blobbing East Africa? What happened to the last fix?

I fixed that rather well by not allowing the muslim conquest CB to be used outside open terrain. Oh and I also placed the holy war CB behind the jihad/crusade wall. Restricting access to CBs make the game a lot less blobby, and forces people to actually rely on claims instead.

 

[Agnitio Ex Mach]

I fixed that rather well by not allowing the muslim conquest CB to be used outside open terrain. Oh and I also placed the holy war CB behind the jihad/crusade wall. Restricting access to CBs make the game a lot less blobby, and forces people to actually rely on claims instead.

Is that Ironman friendly, though?