Dev Diary #119 - Tours and Travel

[Cooleatack]

Those in favor of negative opinion modifiers for not touring, how would you have that work with larger empires? Would this be a limiter to empire size or would the emperor need to be constantly touring different parts of their empire?

Personally, I am in favor of some sort of modifier - like the one you get if you haven't been to war or raiding lately - compounded by vassal personality traits (An arrogant vassal might feel more slighted than a forgiving one). But I am guessing the next DD (or one of them) will reveal that going on tours is not without its downsides. Regents trying to seize power while you are away, maybe?

I would definitely like to see this as a direct counter to realm size. That conquering a large empire is very easy has its own problems outside of the scope of this dlc. However, at least conquering something big is pretty fun. It should not last, however.

This game should give you incentives to conquer (be it militarily, through marriage, or influence) land and it being okay to lose them. Have you gain more from conquest (via dynastic systems, or expanding fame and devotion as systems, for example) than just land and income.

if a player does want to build a large realm that they intend to keep, it should be a major challenge and goal to achieve. It should 100% be possible, but through using all systems at your disposal. Marriage, eugenics, culture, tech, dynasty, vassal contracts etc. In a way, the game already does this. Maintaining the realm is engaging.

The issue is that at the moment, only succession is truly challenging. That is the point where meaningful planning and strategizing is required to maintain your realm. This should be expanded to include the realm in general. Travel and Touring could absolutely play a major role in this, see my previous comments in this thread for some ideas.

When there is no challenge, the game is just “haha conquest/marriage machine goes brrrrr” I, and others take so much time to write these comments precisely because the wonderful devs have come up with these incredible mechanics that have a great wealth of potential.

My issue with it is that they shy away from using them at their full potential, and making them far too optional, as with Royal Court. The comments and diary provided have only shown that this will likely also be the case with Tours, which is a pity, for it is actually an amazing add on to an amazing travel system. I just wish they would dare to take it a step further. Complexity is a good thing that actually fuels roleplay in a natural way.

I do think what has been alluded from the regent system will make the game more complex and difficult and act as a counter to travel. We’ll see what they have in store for us.

 

['Ciusi]

That would be the consequence.
The larger the realm, the more complicated vassal management becomes.
Can I keep a vassal at the far end of the empire content or is it better to give him to someone else? Is it worth it to spend months travelling for this single vassal which means not visiting multiple other vassals? Is it better to instead marry his not so good daughter with my 2nd son just so that he stays content for longer or should I periodically bribe him? Or should I ignore him and build up other vassal relations so that he won't be able to do anything against me?

Thats called gameplay.

Not just gameplay, this would be exactly the ROLEPLAY the developers say they want to focus on. The player would have to actually roleplay as a medieval ruler, they would have to put themselves into their character, think like a ruler and solve the real problems of their realm. This is a perfect example of how mechanics can greatly support and enhance roleplay. And it would bring more complex roleplay than "should I click this button or that button?".

 

[Jayvee94]

Hey guys, with this travel mechanic, not only are they setting up for Trade Routes but also

drumroll please

THE SILK ROAD

That's right. Whether they've been planning it or not, they've created a set up for the Central Asia flavor pack.

 

[A lowborn Emperor]

I think that side of things comes down to personal preference.

As you say “Hold Court” essentially throws curveballs (of varying degrees) into your game. Personally, I’d prefer the game to throw those curveballs at me at random inopportune moments and me have to deal with them rather than me having to deliberately seek them out myself. That’s why I’d like there to be some mechanism that forces me to hold court every so often.

That’s just me though.

I agree we should have curveballs thrown at us at random, and to some extent we do with various events, but I also like the case where I'm given a optional mechanic that contains additional curveballs.

Mostly I want more curveballs, both in the base game mechanics and in the optional add-on mechanics.

 

[TripleAgent]

I would definitely like to see this as a direct counter to realm size. That conquering a large empire is very easy has its own problems outside of the scope of this dlc. However, at least conquering something big is pretty fun. It should not last, however.

This game should give you incentives to conquer (be it militarily, through marriage, or influence) land and it being okay to lose them. Have you gain more from conquest (via dynastic systems, or expanding fame and devotion as systems, for example) than just land and income.

if a player does want to build a large realm that they intend to keep, it should be a major challenge and goal to achieve. It should 100% be possible, but through using all systems at your disposal. Marriage, eugenics, culture, tech, dynasty, vassal contracts etc. In a way, the game already does this. Maintaining the realm is engaging.

The issue is that at the moment, only succession is truly challenging. That is the point where meaningful planning and strategizing is required to maintain your realm. This should be expanded to include the realm in general. Travel and Touring could absolutely play a major role in this, see my previous comments in this thread for some ideas.

When there is no challenge, the game is just “haha conquest/marriage machine goes brrrrr” I, and others take so much time to write these comments precisely because the wonderful devs have come up with these incredible mechanics that have a great wealth of potential.

My issue with it is that they shy away from using them at their full potential, and making them far too optional, as with Royal Court. The comments and diary provided have only shown that this will likely also be the case with Tours, which is a pity, for it is actually an amazing add on to an amazing travel system. I just wish they would dare to take it a step further. Complexity is a good thing that actually fuels roleplay in a natural way.

I do think what has been alluded from the regent system will make the game more complex and difficult and act as a counter to travel. We’ll see what they have in store for us.

Couldn't have said it better myself, 100% this is exactly the kind of consequence I want as part of the system. The touring mechanic has every chance to completely shake up empire/vassal management in a way that's actually immersive from a RP perspective, impactful from a gameplay perspective, and actually challenging to the player. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it's going to be implemented in that way.

I guess we can hope that they make the system moddable enough, the modders are already essential to giving me a fun and challenging CK3 experience now with what they've been able to cobble together within the systems they have, hopefully they'll be able to do the same with this.

 

[SeraphAscending]

@Cooleatack , to clarify, it's not that i don't like the idea, but more that i understand why the devs didn't do it. Dev resources are ultimately finite and developing more and more stuff in parallel is not only more difficult, but people are already complaining about too few DLCs. Making them larger and larger would exacerbate this problem.

As long as there are other ways of solving an introduced problem, it still gives players room to learn the better direct solutions. Added complexity should not be an issue. There is always the possibility of starting with the base game (which btw also grows more complex over time) and buying the dlc later. So I see this as a non-issue. If anyone is interested enough to keep playing, they will also invest the time to learn. As per the nature of how long one playtrough takes.

But how does that work? You want a new penalty and alternate solutions to it that only exists with the DLC, when just one mechanic to alleviate it is introduced with it?
Either it's not necessary to use that new mechanic or it is required. You can't have both.

The base game growing more complex is something the devs are clearly trying to minimize in mental load impact. Most new things are options, not new required tools to master.

From a roleplay perspective, it is much more engaging to have to visit vassals and needing to handle their personalities, and your own in person. This is a medieval simulator. Skype and Zoom weren’t a thing. Instead of saying you can’t do anything while on the road, think of the different options you CAN do on the road. Regents will also play into this.

As has been pointed out by someone earlier regarding a screenshot of the byzantine empire tour. No emperor has ever toured the empire.
It can work without. For quite a while, too. It's not like Alexander 'the great''s plunder-and-naming-cities-after-myself-tour through (mostly) persia, building an empire that immediately collapsed on his death.

Catering to the sentiment held by a few that simply hates change, for completionist/are conservative in their gamedesign/fear-of-the-new, does not make sense when Paradox wants to add onto the game with new content (to sell). There will always be change, and as long as it is not a great majority that dislikes the direction, this should be acceptable to a degree. You cannot have innovation without trying new things.

The difference to the cloaking situation in stellaris is that both the mechanic AND the countermechanic are pretty much independent of the rest of that game.
Your suggestion for T&T makes vassal management harder whether you (can) use the new mechanic or not. But you also said you want there to be alternative solutions. I feel like those statements are disjointed and do not go together.

Either the mechanic IS necessary or it is not. It cannot be both. Or am i entirely misunderstand what you are asking for?
And where would these alternative solutions come from? Not the DLC, obviously, because yet another mechanic wasn't within the scope of it.

he game will always have the different DLC balance issue, that is inherent with Paradox’s DLC strategy. I think they greatly limit this already by making the most impactful aspects free. That doesn’t mean they should limit complexity for something they are about to ask €30 for, in this economy.

to quote myself from the annoucement:

I find this attitude really weird. To me the free patches are something i would want to support with money. It is ultimately always better for long term health of the game - and thus for me. That's why i buy the DLC, and why i would buy it even if it was only mildly interesting to me.
This is a model that just works a lot better for everyone involved. I do consider the free features part of what i pay for in DLC.

Also, some people have less money available and can't support this model as i choose to or buy the paywalled content. They still get some benefits from it and that's another reason why i like it. The game grows for the entire community and it drastically reduces the amount of DLC-walled mods, too. Anyone can make or use mods with the struggle mechanic, whether they own FoI or not. Even if you don't buy T&T, you will probably see the mechanics be used in big mods like RICE or EK2. (once the mod devs get around to it.)
That is very user-friendly and something i am willing to pay for. User-friendliness is rather rare (especially from bigger publishers), so i really don't want them to decide to stop it, because too many people just enjoy the free features and don't buy the DLCs that pay for their development.

It is this exact monotomy I’m afraid of when these mechanics aren’t implemented in a deeper way. If they only add an extra thing to do and a buff here and there, they become meaningless, and shallow. You still want the bonuses, because you’d be ‘dumb’ not to get them when available, so you click them every X years like the Hold Court, with increasingly little afterthought. Making them intertwined with the rest of the game would make it part of the game, instead of an optional extra. In a game like this, where you play hundreds of hours, optional means “will get stale if used too often”.

If it's just free bonuses and you'd want to take them in any situation then it'd for sure be bad. But i don't think it is. You're away from your court, you have a lot less ability to manage your realm while collecting these bonuses. Additionally, tours seem to cost a decent amount of money to start and are probably only profitable with the taxation tour. Some of your schemes are halted. You might not produce heirs (in most cultures/circumstances at least - also depends on whether it's normal for your spouse to accompany you). Your reaction time to external threats is massively reduced. Having a regent there means the AI is in charge of defending your realm, after all.

But the root of the problem you describe is the same as in what i described. Compulsion.
Whether it is overpowered free bonuses or necessity because of maluses is merely the decoration of it. It's the compulsion that truly creates the dreadful monotony and that must be avoided.

 

[Drake_Hound]

Not just gameplay, this would be exactly the ROLEPLAY the developers say they want to focus on. The player would have to actually roleplay as a medieval ruler, they would have to put themselves into their character, think like a ruler and solve the real problems of their realm. This is a perfect example of how mechanics can greatly support and enhance roleplay.

I disagree some people dislike change , but change happens, but do not force a too great change on somebody..
Since it is a DLC , doesn't mean it is a FORCED DLC , this isn't how Paradox works, then you enter the territory of EA , while understandable ..
You want to go full EA route where Paradox just steals every good mod idea, and just incorporate it in their game with slight improvement. and call it done.
That isn't the paradox idea of encouraging modders , to become programmers and long term creating supporters, it is called milking great for the accountancy group.
But bad for the creativity group.

Applying a negative buff , cause somebody refuse to buy a DLC is the easy and lazy way out of encouraging support.
Infact next up play the game linear way instead of a grand strategy way ... or else incur a negative buff , like the domain limit ?
we want you to play a GRAND STRATEGY only our way or the highway ?

The word is grand strategy , means more then one options or solutions, sometimes players are creative in finding solutions or combination that DEV or Q&A didn't find.
That is also part of the grand strategy gaming.
if somebody wants to spent 10 hours exploiting something , then 40 hours playing the game , all glory to them.. it is easier to just hit the console if you want to do it that way.

 

[NilsFabian]

I hope the tours include a real chance of danger for the characters and a real risk of failure.

This. Never forget, Emperor Barbarossa died while taking a bath in a river while traveling. Not that I want every journey to be perilous, but yeah, one could die on the journey if making stupid choices.

And another thing, if traveling through a war zone adds to the danger of your journey, will the danger to your journey increase dynamically if a war breaks out in what was a peaceful county when you planned your trip and set off?

Sounds good but then I want to be able to alter the course of the journey.

I wonder if I would get some sort of penalties if I travel too often through the same county. Yes it is nice that King Otto is visiting us, but not every year, his court is like a swarm of locust.

"God save the king and us from his visits"

 

[TripleAgent]

The incentive to Tour is that Tours are rewarding and fun, and the rewards can help you out in various circumstances. I don't believe it is good or necessary to arbitrarily punish the player for not participating in Tours, players should participate in an activity because the activity is fun to do.

It's not arbitrary punishment though, it's logical punishment! If a monarch refuses to visit his vassals, to make a show of force and splendor to the locals, shouldn't that be reflected in the gameplay in a negative way? The game already suffers from a lack of challenge for a lot of us, adding this wrinkle and actually encouraging the use of the TT mechanics in a sensible, logical, and realistic way would at least be something to address that, especially with extremely large empires that might not be easy to hold together without a LOT of effort on the part of the ruler, in part using this cool system! I fear this is going to end up like RC, where I only really click on it because I get the notification and want the notification to go away, because it isn't integrated with the rest of the game in an interesting, compelling way (plus seeing the same court events over and over in a playthrough gets them feeling a bit bland).

Much like how Hunts and Feasts and Pilgrimages are all optional, whether or not you need to tour will depend on your circumstances. A Tour will likely be pretty vital if you've just ascended to the throne, getting those unruly vassals in line and out of factions against you.

That's part of the problem a lot of us asking for deeper and more meaningful mechanics have, we have so many optional mechanics that don't feel at all impactful other than "exchange gold for prestige, exchange gold for stress relief, exchange gold for piety" and there's no mechanical benefit for doing so (or detriment for not doing so).

If I don't go on a pilgrimage in my entire 30 year reign, my pious vassals shouldn't like that. If I don't go on hunts or hold feasts, my powerful vassals shouldn't like that. The fact that these events currently lack detrimental mechanics shouldn't be a justification for those detrimental mechanics not existing! If we're revamping these for the current system, isn't it reasonable to reevaluate how the player mechanically interacts with them? I go on a pilgrimage when I need more piety, I hold a feast when I need to relieve stress, I go hunting when I need prestige. At this point it feels like buttons to press to get things, not meaningful to the gameplay loop or RP.

At the very least, do you know if there are metrics/systems as part of TT that would at least measure the amount of time you haven't gone on a tour or done an activity, so some of these detriments we're asking for could be added by mods? As in, if you don't tour in 5 years, vassals get -10 opinion, 10 years -20 opinion, etc? That's the barebones of what such a system could be, but at least it's something.

 

[kawamuratc]

Thats the exact same problem like holding court which has already been mentioned several times. Either the net benefit of tours and tournaments is positive which means people will press the button every X years to farm buffs or money, making a already easy game even more easy. Or no one will do them because there is no reason to do so just like holding court.

As @Aart said, the DLC must come both with the hammer (Tours) and a nail (deteriorating relations). That way the mechanics are actually tied into the game.
Take Reapers Due as example. You don't opt-in into plagues.

I don't understand this point of view. For example, Reapers Due for CK2 brought epidemics that basically had no positives for the characters, they brought a lot of negatives, risk of death or even game over. The player had to fight those negatives, monitor the spread of the disease, build hospitals, sacrifice infected people, sometimes even his own family... Everyone who played the game with this DLC had this content forced on them. If someone didn't want to have that content, they didn't have to play this DLC. But the content itself was complex, balanced, and presented new challenges. The point is to bring content that I will have to do, but that will also be fun to do (holding court is not, tours look like they could be).

This is not a criticism of TaT, on the contrary, the mechanics presented in this DD are very interesting (I see travel as the basis for future trade routes and nomads) and I'm very excited for new content. But many players find the game very easy, and adding new challenges at least as a game rule compatible with achievements would definitely be a plus (I understand that if tours would be mandatory, they would have to cost less gold).

You can use Steam to play on older patches. If you want updates, there will be changes you disagree with too. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Reaper’s Due didn’t add plagues so much as make them far more complex. It also came with rules to tweak frequency and danger, and should have probably came with more.

Devs are making a game for a lot of people. In general, they have to balance a lot of different desires.

I won’t even try to articulate my view when @SeraphAscending has already said it better than I can:

The problems with that approach are manifold, though.

• Any new feature increases mental load, which is especially troublesome for more casual players. (like it or not, a significant chunk of players)
  introducing penalties if not kept in mind is making the game a LOT less casual-friendly.
  
  
• Mechanical compulsion gets in the way of freedom of roleplay - also important to a lot of players.
  If i have to tour my empire for years at a time, there are many other things i can't do in that huge amount of playtime.
  
  
• Making DLC mechanics compulsive will be a major reason for some (especially veteran) players not to buy that DLC. Guaranteed. Currently Stellaris First Contact has brought up a small, but fervant group of people who are so vehemently opposed to cloaking being a thing (even if likely not strong enough to become the new meta) that they refuse to buy the DLC that introduces this as a mechanic. Because once you have the DLC, enemies will also have cloaking - even though counterplay is possible and not that troublesome, they do not want it at all.
  
  
• The game would have to be balanced with and without T&T, separately from here on out for all future DLCs regarding vassal management.
  
  
• Often, mechanical compulsion is really, really annoying in roleplay-based games. See Skyrim's infamous mountains of daggers you had to craft to get better at smithing to even have a chance of ever making something useful. It quickly turns from immersion to dreadful monotony. That's not fun. CK3 is aiming to give more option and variety. So in the long run you will be able to do tons of different things and are not required to do the same things over and over again.

You will likely not be catered to if your preferred play style requires enforcing new and large limits/irritations on other people’s play styles. We’re all playing the game in a lot of different ways, and CK3’s great for the freedom it offers.

If you would like less freedom for more challenge, that’s a thing that you’ll likely have to add on your own using mods and self-imposed rules.

 

[malibooth]

If the DLC adds a new opinion modifier that I'll call "Neglect", it can make tours more meaningful.

Neglect is a a negative opinion modifier that builds up over time, the rate of increase proportional to distance from the liege's capital. If it builds up enough, combined with other opinion modifiers, a vassal is likely to be in an independence or dissolution faction. Also reduces tax and levies, because a vassal can get away with it if the liege can't be bothered to check on things.

Tours can reset it, although that can be modified by the interaction with the vassal, making things better or worse.

This gives an incentive to do a tour, but doesn't make it a necessity. A popular ruler can get away without them, also use things like Sway, Gifts, etc. Bit awkward when that ruler dies, and the heir finds a whole lot of trouble brewing because of the previous ruler's neglect.

 

[Cooleatack]

@Cooleatack , to clarify, it's not that i don't like the idea, but more that i understand why the devs didn't do it. Dev resources are ultimately finite and developing more and more stuff in parallel is not only more difficult, but people are already complaining about too few DLCs. Making them larger and larger would exacerbate this problem.


But how does that work? You want a new penalty and alternate solutions to it that only exists with the DLC, when just one mechanic to alleviate it is introduced with it?
Either it's not necessary to use that new mechanic or it is required. You can't have both.

The base game growing more complex is something the devs are clearly trying to minimize in mental load impact. Most new things are options, not new required tools to master.


As has been pointed out by someone earlier regarding a screenshot of the byzantine empire tour. No emperor has ever toured the empire.
It can work without. For quite a while, too. It's not like Alexander 'the great''s plunder-and-naming-cities-after-myself-tour through (mostly) persia, building an empire that immediately collapsed on his death.


The difference to the cloaking situation in stellaris is that both the mechanic AND the countermechanic are pretty much independent of the rest of that game.
Your suggestion for T&T makes vassal management harder whether you (can) use the new mechanic or not. But you also said you want there to be alternative solutions. I feel like those statements are disjointed and do not go together.

Either the mechanic IS necessary or it is not. It cannot be both. Or am i entirely misunderstand what you are asking for?
And where would these alternative solutions come from? Not the DLC, obviously, because yet another mechanic wasn't within the scope of it.


to quote myself from the annoucement:



If it's just free bonuses and you'd want to take them in any situation then it'd for sure be bad. But i don't think it is. You're away from your court, you have a lot less ability to manage your realm while collecting these bonuses. Additionally, tours seem to cost a decent amount of money to start and are probably only profitable with the taxation tour. Some of your schemes are halted. You might not produce heirs (in most cultures/circumstances at least - also depends on whether it's normal for your spouse to accompany you). Your reaction time to external threats is massively reduced. Having a regent there means the AI is in charge of defending your realm, after all.

But the root of the problem you describe is the same as in what i described. Compulsion.
Whether it is overpowered free bonuses or necessity because of maluses is merely the decoration of it. It's the compulsion that truly creates the dreadful monotony and that must be avoided.

Thank you for the reply.
I’ll try to word it differently. What I mean Is this:

1. It is too easy to maintain a large realm post inheritance crisis.
2. Travel makes it far more interesting and intriguing to play as a character in a world. Tours make it interesting to interact with vassals. It is presented as a tool to make vassal management easier, through various avenues.
3. Vassal management is already easy (point 1), and thematically: traveling, touring, and holding court should be inherently connected to keeping vassals loyal.
4. This is not the case, vassals are still easy to appease, made even easier by touring with no downsides for not touring.
5. Thus, there is a need for much more punishing vassal management when growing larger. It should require increasing difficulty to maintain and appease the vassals. Counteracted by technology and centralization, but that is outside the scope of this dlc)

I therefore think you’re right in that more difficult vassal management is what I’m really suggesting. The potential of the tour system just made it more apparent. I maintain that different features should be connected and expanded upon. That it takes time and effort from the devs, should not be an excuse to create a bunch of unconnected/loosely connected systems.

Connecting that feature to this dlc (which I would add to the base game, but sure) and adding a tour as a possible solution, shouldn’t mean its the only possible solution. Also, as you say yourself, being on tour comes with its own cost of opportunity. Therefore increasing strategy and creativity required to solve it. Tours and courts should be a part of the solution, not the solution in and of itself.

With a bit more thought (and communication!), they would result in much more complex (roleplay) systems that are enjoyable for far longer than yet another fun mechanic that becomes near meaningless after using it often. Which is a shame for the effort and money spent of both parties. Especially because the intention is to make and give something lasting and engaging.

 

[Cooleatack]

Reaper’s Due didn’t add plagues so much as make them far more complex. It also came with rules to tweak frequency and danger, and should have probably came with more.

Devs are making a game for a lot of people. In general, they have to balance a lot of different desires.

I won’t even try to articulate my view when @SeraphAscending has already said it better than I can:

You will likely not be catered to if your preferred play style requires enforcing new and large limits/irritations on other people’s play styles. We’re all playing the game in a lot of different ways, and CK3’s great for the freedom it offers.

If you would like less freedom for more challenge, that’s a thing that you’ll likely have to add on your own using mods and self-imposed rules.

I am advocating for more freedom of choice if anything! Instead of tours being a three trick pony, it should be one of many options to solve various realm issues. I just wish it were more than only adding yet another buff. The necessity of tours implies vassals being disloyal without them.

The whole dev diary is written like it is super essential for a ruler to visit their vassals so that taxes/opinion/control are maintained. Then only to pose it as something that fixes it, instead of these values not decreasing when you don’t tour. That is major cognitive dissonance.

Other solutions should come from holding court: i.e. having vassals tour to you; sending armies, changing contracts, cultural acceptance, scheming, all the other mechanics.

Touring should definitely not be “Tour now to solve added opinion malus” Rulers should have a harder time in general dealing with (distant) vassals, and Tours should be a fun way of dealing with that.

 

[Drake_Hound]

If the DLC adds a new opinion modifier that I'll call "Neglect", it can make tours more meaningful.

Neglect is a a negative opinion modifier that builds up over time, the rate of increase proportional to distance from the liege's capital. If it builds up enough, combined with other opinion modifiers, a vassal is likely to be in an independence or dissolution faction. Also reduces tax and levies, because a vassal can get away with it if the liege can't be bothered to check on things.

Tours can reset it, although that can be modified by the interaction with the vassal, making things better or worse.

This gives an incentive to do a tour, but doesn't make it a necessity. A popular ruler can get away without them, also use things like Sway, Gifts, etc. Bit awkward when that ruler dies, and the heir finds a whole lot of trouble brewing because of the previous ruler's neglect.

This is a much better system, yeah it doesn't affect the current ruler .. and it carries over in the heir/ heirs , make sense and also is a cause of rebellion and discontent among vassals.
So if the Ruler neglects it's vassals , it is indeed a cause for a uprising once the new Ruler is installed.
Also makes your heirs action more meaningful , then keeping it at a castle locked in and having no experience in realm management.
Same way Tyranny was inherited... to prevent people from just killing their own kids or disinherit them or do tons of evil things knowing your time is up.
So this way if you want a stable succession you shouldn't neglect your realm for your successor , (if people hate doing all those popups.. cause they done it 100 times already, they can automate the heir to do the tour and face the consequences or risk. )

Edit= the more I think about it , the more this system suggested by Malibooth can work , since even if people doesn't have the DLC , the Heir can be automated.
to do the tour. so both side win , in the end it makes the Heir/Heirs more meaningful then what it is now , a backup ruler with stats , it gives a additional layer to child regency who can send you on a Tour against your wish .. thus even more interactivity. for those with or without the DLC.

 

[Vityviktor]

I think Tours shouldn't be optional when you're a Feudal ruler (or under certain authority laws), just like calling the Court from the Royal Court DLC.

If these are choices locked behind DLC paywalls (thus not part of vanilla core CK3) then make some DLC-specific (thus, not in vanilla core CK3) maluses: some kind of vassal relationship malus when you're not calling the Court or visiting your vassals for a long time.

 

[kawamuratc]

I am advocating for more freedom of choice if anything! Instead of tours being a three trick pony, it should be one of many options to solve various realm issues. I just wish it were more than only adding yet another buff. The necessity of tours implies vassals being disloyal without them.

The whole dev diary is written like it is super essential for a ruler to visit their vassals so that taxes/opinion/control are maintained. Then only to pose it as something that fixes it, instead of these values not decreasing when you don’t tour. That is major cognitive dissonance.

Other solutions should come from holding court: i.e. having vassals tour to you; sending armies, changing contracts, cultural acceptance, scheming, all the other mechanics.

Touring should definitely not be “Tour now to solve added opinion malus” Rulers should have a harder time in general dealing with (distant) vassals, and Tours should be a fun way of dealing with that.

Vassals are disloyal without you managing them.

Tours will be one way of doing that, along side seducing them or getting strong hooks on them. No one of those choices will be mandatory, so you can figure out how you best want to accomplish the goal.

As far as I’m understanding your argument, it has gone back and forth between “tours should be mandatory for vassal management or else I do not consider them deeply embedded mechanics” and “vassal management should be looked at it because it’s currently too easy”.

I am not speaking on the second sentiment, only the first.

 

[Quipore]

First off: Fantastic Dev Diary. I was a little excited for the DLC but now I'm super excited.

My question: Does weather play into this? Traveling around Scotland in June isn't the same as traveling around in February.
What about climate? February in Scotland isn't the same as February in Greece.

 

[Tiax]

• The game would have to be balanced with and without T&T, separately from here on out for all future DLCs regarding vassal management.

The game isn't even balanced now. Why would it have to start with T&T?

 

[Cooleatack]

If the DLC adds a new opinion modifier that I'll call "Neglect", it can make tours more meaningful.

Neglect is a a negative opinion modifier that builds up over time, the rate of increase proportional to distance from the liege's capital. If it builds up enough, combined with other opinion modifiers, a vassal is likely to be in an independence or dissolution faction. Also reduces tax and levies, because a vassal can get away with it if the liege can't be bothered to check on things.

Tours can reset it, although that can be modified by the interaction with the vassal, making things better or worse.

This gives an incentive to do a tour, but doesn't make it a necessity. A popular ruler can get away without them, also use things like Sway, Gifts, etc. Bit awkward when that ruler dies, and the heir finds a whole lot of trouble brewing because of the previous ruler's neglect.

This is probably the best solution to the issues raised. Neglect could encompass so many opinion modifiers! It would help unstack it from the opinion overview, and make more sense in general. Make it the connector of all the loose mechanics regarding vassal control.

If a dev watches this thread, if you take anything away from this at all, it’s this solution right here!

 

[Cooleatack]

Vassals are disloyal without you managing them.

Tours will be one way of doing that, along side seducing them or getting strong hooks on them. No one of those choices will be mandatory, so you can figure out how you best want to accomplish the goal.

As far as I’m understanding your argument, it has gone back and forth between “tours should be mandatory for vassal management or else I do not consider them deeply embedded mechanics” and “vassal management should be looked at it because it’s currently too easy”.

I am not speaking on the second sentiment, only the first.

I’m saying if you implement tours, it should be as a possible way to solve point 2. If not, then what’s the point?