Dev Diary #145 - Legends & Legitimacy

[riadach]

Something for the future maybe is being able to have a satire, rather than a legend, written about a rival and spreading that legend to undermine his legitimacy.

 

[OnceSetCannotBeChanged]

But more importantly- Legitimacy should be on a per title basis. Example given in the thread i started a few days ago- You can be the legitimate Ruler of kingdom A, invade Kingdom b, and might become even more legitimate in Kingdom A, for being a successful warrior, but the counts and dukes of Kingdom b would see you as somebody absolutely illegitimate.

I hope this will be dealt with (somewhat) via the expected Legitimacy mechanic. New vassals will expect you to be more legitimate. If you're below the expected legitimacy for a vassal, this should cause maluses.

"Your vassals, of course, have Expectations of you. This is calculated based on your tier, era, and how long your family has ruled over theirs, besides their opinion and relationship to you. Not meeting your vassal expectations will make them discontent and more likely to join factions against you."

 

[JaJe]

https://imgur.com/a/tWa27J2

 

[kimuyama]

It's refreshing to see an actual application of ai in art, instead of just having the ai do the entire job by itself, great choice of loading screen picture!

 

[sandwich8]

I'm a little worried that legitimacy might create... "snowball" gameplay. Rather than being an independent value that requires care, it will reinforce winning or losing positions. Like if low legitimacy increases faction chance and faction demands lower legitimacy, isn't that a negative feedback loop? Ditto the other way around.

 

[HaziTru7]

I love all the new content first of all. I do feel like 3 diseases and 1 plague is a little on the small side. We've been waiting on this since the release of CK3 pretty much. I can see this becoming extremely repetitive like how we only have limited harm events which I keep seeing the same ones over and over.

If you could expand the pool a bit maybe 5 diseases and 2 plagues would be nice. Also if you can revisit harm events and add a few that would be cool and very well welcomed as well.

 

[vilkas622]

Interesting read.

The 2D art is so great. I really enjoy reading through the process to come up with the illustrations that make it in the game. Really top stuff.

I'm unimpressed with the Legends mechanic. I don't quite understand why maintenance is the same for both the 1st and final tier? I think for balance should it be more the higher you legend level?

Overall I don't feel this system really adds much interest to a play-through. I'll be interested to see it in action to see if I'm just missing how the system will interact during play, but I have some fears in based on this DD that it's a pretty disconnected system that just adds some passive benefits and event generation. Which now that I type it, seems to be line with DLC features for CK3.

For legitimacy, like other have said tying to titles would have been a far better design choice. And only rulers having legitimacy is a pretty disappointing choice as well.

I appreciate with the loss legitimacy for forcing a child to take vows, you've tried to add some cost to gaming succession, but I wish it was a bit more nuanced. Something like forcing children who are in line to inherit titles to take vows should lower legitimacy, scaling with the title(s) they were to inherit. Ruler's children, namely the younger who weren't high in the line of succession, often took the vows, and I don't think having your 4th son take the vow when he's not set to inherit any titles should impact your legitimacy with your subjects/vassals unless they are friends or have a high opinion of that son.

 

[Lordinquisitor]

I hope this will be dealt with (somewhat) via the expected Legitimacy mechanic. New vassals will expect you to be more legitimate. If you're below the expected legitimacy for a vassal, this should cause maluses.

"Your vassals, of course, have Expectations of you. This is calculated based on your tier, era, and how long your family has ruled over theirs, besides their opinion and relationship to you. Not meeting your vassal expectations will make them discontent and more likely to join factions against you."

While this will somewhat represent this, it´s still too shallow.

Again it has the issue of "expected value of legitimacy" being non-sensical. Legitimacy always needs context. Ruler A is seen as more/less/equally legitimate in relation to Claimant B.

When you conquer a new kingdom and depose it´s king those vassals should have their opinions and should compare how legitimate you are in relation to the deposed king. And yes, at some point they might say: "Well, this new guy is pretty legit, eh? Shares our religion, isn´t a tyrant, he´s rather more suitable than the last dork." But now they don´t consider claimants and just stop complaining at some point.

 

[blackninja9939]

So for reference legitimacy expectations will differ from people outside your rightful realm, so there is still title based impacts, they also differ based on time the dynasty has been a vassal to your dynasty, if you were their preferred heir, family relations, and if they are a powerful vassal.

The reason it is not on a title by title basis as a pure metric is a few:

• Legitimacy applies modifiers to you as a sum total score, doing that when you have multiple scores becomes very weird, do you take highest? Lowest? Average? Some other value? Try to apply modifiers only in the realm they came from, well most modifiers don't work that way, so just apply all of them?
  • Any version of that would lead to some very weird modifier applications
• The main thing you gain from a title -> title basis is different vassals seeing you differently and liking that or not
  • That is handled by the differing expectations
  • Expectation vs actual level is what applies the opinion changes
• Displaying this in the UI and HUD becomes also odd, again which value do you pick? If you don't show it in the HUD and only in the title window then you get more issues like it now not being a value in the forefront of a player's mind
  • If you display only the primary title in the HUD then you get issues of well what if that one is not the most impactful

I do genuinely think that most of the desire for it being on title level comes from primarily the desire for different vassals to view your legitimacy differently, which expectations directly accounts for in the same way taxes and levies do, if there is something else you feel is missing there I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

 

[OnceSetCannotBeChanged]

I'm a little worried that legitimacy might create... "snowball" gameplay. Rather than being an independent value that requires care, it will reinforce winning or losing positions. Like if low legitimacy increases faction chance and faction demands lower legitimacy, isn't that a negative feedback loop? Ditto the other way around.

I will try to hold judgment until I can actually play it, but it does seem like it might be another case of new features just making the game easier. I can't imagine the AI is going to use these mechanics well. Maybe there will be a game rule to increase AI legitimacy/decrease human legitimacy.

 

[boorkie]

The one disappointing thing here is the thing we all knew was coming. Legitimacy being per person not per title.

"you can be a highly prestigious king of the Capetian dynasty, but should you be the emperor of Byzantium?" is exactly right. You would be the legitimate king of France but not a legitimate Byz emperor

I could not agree more

Legitimacy was high on my wish list but the feature implemented is nothing like legitimacy, it's more of a character status bar waiting to be filled up and it's ruining the rest of the perfectly fine chapter for me

Devs I urge you to seriously reconsider the legitimacy implementation

 

[Connorus12]

When creating your own legend, will you be able to choose its name and description or will they be taken from a pre-defined list?

 

[Lordinquisitor]

Thanks for the reply and i appreciate your work, designing and communicating.


Tl;dr

I think, on a basic level, legitimacy has to be considered to other things. To a specific titles and to specific people. By making it one global value it simplifies the system far too much. The idea of there being different values of legitimacy only makes sense in relation to other people, without this context it´s a bit "silly"- Because my impression is that people mostly said "He is a (il)legitimate ruler (compared to other claimants" instead of "Ah, guess he´s legitimate enough." or "He´s super duper legitimate."

if there is something else you feel is missing there I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

Personally i think the issues i see arise from the combination of legitimacy only applying to rulers, not being on a title basis and the design choice of applying global bonuses/maluses.

Because while i get the issue of "If you have multiple legitimacy values how do you calculate bonuses and maluses?" I don´t think that we need global bonuses and maluses in the first place.

I think the bonuses/maluses should apply to specific situations.

Instead of a high legitimacy making "Vassal acceptance" more likely, having a legitimate claim to "Kingdom XYZ" should make vassalissing Rulers within the de jure area of this kingdom easier. Instead of a low legitimacy making claimant factions more likely, having a low legitimacy value for Kingdom xyz should make it more likely that Vassals consider someone with a better claim to this kingdom.

This would reduce, in my opinion, the need to display this in an obvious manner. Instead there could be alerts notifying you if your legitimacy to a title is considered low, or maybe even if your legitimacy to a title you don´t posses is very high (and thus the rulers within this kingdom might be glad about you marching in.).

Graphically, where legitimacy is displayed right now, it could also display the coat-of-arms of your highest (titles) and display them with different colors, depending on your legitimacy. Would get cluttered if you hoard titles, but ah, games not being meant to be played that way, anyway.

Sure, some questions would remain- Like, how do foreign rulers perceive you if you are legitimate in one kingdom and not in another? But ah, seems a minor point for me and averages can be used.

I also think that this shouldn´t apply for countries, just for ease of implementation.

I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

In addition, as stated, the system as is completely neglects claimants to a title and the fact that your perceived legitimacy should be in relation towards other claimants. It´s neat that there´s a system in place which checks on a per vassal level, and considers for example how long you´ve ruled over them, but it fails to compare this to other claimants, possibly leading to strange situations in which a very legitimate ruler is displaced and the new vassals stop caring about him in particular and only check whether the new guy manages to reach a certain level of legitimacy.

 

[sreckom92]

I do genuinely think that most of the desire for it being on title level comes from primarily the desire for different vassals to view your legitimacy differently, which expectations directly accounts for in the same way taxes and levies do, if there is something else you feel is missing there I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

Vassals within your de-jure realm could work under the full spectrum of the Legitimacy mechanic.
Other vassals are locked to modifiers from level 1 Legitimacy, until their lands de-jure drift into your realm.

Would it be problematic to have a system like this?

 

[vilkas622]

I do genuinely think that most of the desire for it being on title level comes from primarily the desire for different vassals to view your legitimacy differently, which expectations directly accounts for in the same way taxes and levies do, if there is something else you feel is missing there I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

For me its less about the different vassals but about your heirs/other claimants to the title and the lack of interesting feedback this would provide them. Beyond the Strong Claim a son/heir will have after my rulers death, if that son had a higher legitimacy score than the holder for a title that they do not have, it could be part of a feedback loop for AI vassals to launch claimant wars.

And for titles that my ruler usurped, having non-player dynasty characters (former ruler/their children) with higher or similarly legitimate claims to a title I would want that information to feedback into AI characters to weigh whether to attempt to support the deposed dynasty's rule. I think this would have also especially tied in nicely with the future landless play. Where my non-landed character could have claims, and a legitimacy value for a title and used that to try to get support for other characters (potential vassals) on gaining that title.

 

[boorkie]

So for reference legitimacy expectations will differ from people outside your rightful realm, so there is still title based impacts, they also differ based on time the dynasty has been a vassal to your dynasty, if you were their preferred heir, family relations, and if they are a powerful vassal.

The reason it is not on a title by title basis as a pure metric is a few:

• Legitimacy applies modifiers to you as a sum total score, doing that when you have multiple scores becomes very weird, do you take highest? Lowest? Average? Some other value? Try to apply modifiers only in the realm they came from, well most modifiers don't work that way, so just apply all of them?
  • Any version of that would lead to some very weird modifier applications
• The main thing you gain from a title -> title basis is different vassals seeing you differently and liking that or not
  • That is handled by the differing expectations
  • Expectation vs actual level is what applies the opinion changes
• Displaying this in the UI and HUD becomes also odd, again which value do you pick? If you don't show it in the HUD and only in the title window then you get more issues like it now not being a value in the forefront of a player's mind
  • If you display only the primary title in the HUD then you get issues of well what if that one is not the most impactful

I do genuinely think that most of the desire for it being on title level comes from primarily the desire for different vassals to view your legitimacy differently, which expectations directly accounts for in the same way taxes and levies do, if there is something else you feel is missing there I'd be interested to know too and if it can be something handled via the expectations or if it really would truly only work with split legitimacy across titles in which case how do we handle the above points?

Interesting, thank you for providing this

It sounds like a side effect of the de jure ownership implementation and vassalage being attached to people rather than titles so a king of France can never have a king of England pay feudal taxes to his domains in France

Most of the information you've shared with us does explain well the reasoning behind the implementation and mentions some interesting mechanics. It's odd it was never mentioned in any of the Dev Diaries since this is kind of information that would be useful to know. Especially since the previous DD portrayed almost no new information and was pretty much a filler DD

EDIT I would argue the only way to properly implement this would be to tie vassalage to titles. That would allow me to be a legitimate king of France but an illegitimate king of Aquitaine. The legitimacy bonuses or maluses could then be applied to holders of titles being tied de jure to a specific crown

 

[crowdemon]

Good DD. Thanks for sharing the illustration process.

 

[PrDelahaye]

hehe boiiiii

 

[ajokitty]

Can we have multiple Legends in our family?

If we establish a Holy Legend for one of our ancestors, and have the relevant dynasty perk, do they become a Saint?

 

[47pik]

I don’t fully agree with some assertions in the comments that legitimacy is only relative to other claimants. While that can be true, I think there is merit to some kind of fundamental legitimacy with respect to a king or emperor being in power by divine right - a plague ravaging a kingdom (as pointed out in a DD) tarnishes the ruler’s connection to God and fundamentally erodes legitimacy whether or not there is a more appealing claimant.

I do agree that there probably ought to be a more dynamic system that factors in other claimants, but I won’t judge til I get my hands on it and try it myself. But I do think it’s overstating the case to say legitimacy is ONLY relative to other claimants.