Dev Diary #145 - Legends & Legitimacy

[Genocidalvirus]

Looks great except, but cons should be heavier. We keep adding things that just further increase player vs AI power gap without things to balance.
0 and 1 legitimacy should have heavier negative effects on popular opinion and prestige (hated) and gold (due to theft).

 

[riadach]

And what about the poor neglected harps?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

And what about the poor neglected harps?

View attachment 1085713View attachment 1085712View attachment 1085711

You didn't see the lute box?

 

['Ciusi]

Since this DD introduced Legitimacy and Legends pretty superficially and rather caused a lot of questions about how these new mechanics will work (which players here have asked), I'm a bit surprised that none of the developers here are responding to answer at least some of them. In most of the other DDs, the developers are pretty keen to answer questions as long as those questions aren't about something they want to cover up in another DD. But we won't have any other DD regarding these mechanics, so now is the time.

 

[riadach]

You didn't see the lute box?

A lute is not a harp.

Lutes are for bowsy balladeers, harps are for gentlemen musicians.

 

[Testerian2]

So that would imply that each character's individual expected legitimacy (separate from the average expected legitimacy) gives you an opinion boon or malus as there is no opinion modifier mentioned in the average summary screen.

Would that mean, that recently conquered vassals would expect higher legitimacy than previous vassals? Or you could conquer foreign land to your heart content and just appoint people with low expectations?

 

[Leoreth]

Shouldn't your ability to fabricate claims also (strongly) depend on your legitimacy?

 

[riadach]

Shouldn't your ability to fabricate claims also (strongly) depend on your legitimacy?

Fabricate claims should be a plot in reality, reliant on the learning skill of your bishop. No one should know it is fake unless your bishop fails to keep his action a secret. If the plot is undiscovered it should cost less legtimacy to pursue the claim than it would should it be revealed.

 

[Leoreth]

Fabricate claims should be a plot in reality, reliant on the learning skill of your bishop. No one should know it is fake unless your bishop fails to keep his action a secret. If the plot is undiscovered it should cost less legtimacy to pursue the claim than it would should it be revealed.

I agree with that - but nevertheless your legitimacy should have a big impact on the success chance of such a plot.

 

[FunGaming]

Looks like a great expansion, this would have been the perfect expansion to also add the much requested coronation option though.

 

[Antimonum]

Will the feudal Bulgarian Ruling Dynasty have the Hunnic Heritage (Blood of Atila in CK2), or will it only be Nomads?
After all the whole historical Basis for such a claim is the "Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans", which kind of links the Dulo Dynasty to Atila. Boris is a direct decendant of Krum, who was most probably Dulo Dynasty, because of his origins.

 

[Ranadiel]

Would that mean, that recently conquered vassals would expect higher legitimacy than previous vassals? Or you could conquer foreign land to your heart content and just appoint people with low expectations?

Based on the factors that were posted by blackninja9939, it would seem likely that newly conquered vassals are likely to expect higher legitimacy than those that have been vassals for ages. Going through the factors posted:

• people outside your rightful realm - Newly conquered vassals are more likely to be outside the de jure territory of your titles, so are more likely to get the malus to your expected legitimacy from being outside your "rightful realm"
• time the dynasty has been a vassal to your dynasty - Newly conquered vassals are less likely to be part of dynasties that have been your vassals for years absent Dynasty of Many Crowns scenarios where half the world are vassals of your dynasty, so are unlikely to have any benefits from this factor
• if you were their preferred heir - Newly conquered vassals will likely lack the benefits of you being their preferred heir (and depending on how it is coded might even get a malus since you are unlikely to be their preferred heir outside of weird elective scenarios)
• family relations - Newly conquered vassals are unlikely to have any family relations that would benefit your expected legitimacy from them
• if they are a powerful vassal - This one is probably less likely to directly factor in on newly conquered territories except in scenarios where you freshly conquer a whole kingdom

As for appointing people with low expectations, well there are complications with that. It is mentioned in the initial announcement that revoking titles without cause will lower your legitimacy. So you can't just conquer a kingdom and kick out all of its old nobles to replace with your people without tanking your personal legitimacy.

You could use a casus belli like Holy War (or just personal claims) to remove the old holders and then replace them with your own people presumably without losing any legitimacy, but then you might have an issue of the new vassal's personal legitimacy being low making them into less effective vassals than the old owners would have been. Very possible this strategy might still be optimal, but we'll have to see how the moving parts come together to be sure.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

A lute is not a harp.

Lutes are for bowsy balladeers, harps are for gentlemen musicians.

View attachment 1085731

Stop harping on about it, stop fiddling, and get back on the subject before someone gets accused of being a lyre or we get violins.

 

[riadach]

Stop harping on about it, stop fiddling, and get back on the subject before someone gets accused of being a lyre or we get violins.

I tried to come out with a witty comeback but all I could think of was "cello out and pipe down".

 

[WestuHal]

I tried to come out with a witty comeback but all I could think of was "cello out and pipe down".

Hoping that Paradox doesn’t take the opportunity to add lute boxes to the game.

 

[PDX-Trinexx]

Stop harping on about it, stop fiddling, and get back on the subject before someone gets accused of being a lyre or we get violins.

Jail. Straight to jail.

 

[nelliott]

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?

Having a vassal's expectation for the legitimacy of their ruler change depending on who's ruling seems backwards to me. Instead, it should be that the ruler's legitimacy changes based on who they are ruling. If many of the impacts of legitimacy come from expected vs actual, and expectations change by vassal (title/region/etc), what do you gain by having a global character legitimacy score?

It's odd to have an absolute value that is the base legitimacy for a character to be a ruler anywhere in the world. For example, it doesn't make sense for someone viewed as legitimate the descendant of King Arthur to be viewed as a more legitimate ruler in India. Being a legitimate king of England shouldn't increase vassalization acceptance across the continent. In my mind, these global effects are what prestige and renown are for. I don't see what the legitimacy concept brings to the table unless it is related to vassals and titles.

Addressing this with expectations doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Legitimacy is all about perception, so having an absolute value of legitimacy per character is odd. A Count in India newly conquered by King Arthur's descendent would view him as an illegitimate ruler, not as a somewhat legitimate ruler that they are expecting to be perfectly legitimate. It seems mechanically odd as well, as a vassal's expectation for the legitimacy of their ruler changes depending on who's ruling. Instead, it should be that the ruler's legitmacy varies based on who/where they are ruling -- legitmacy is perception, and it is the perception of rightness that changes, not the expectation that your ruler be right.

Regarding your specific points:

Having multiple scores -- I see two main options

• Use an average
  • It could potentially be a weighted average based on the tier and/or domain size of each vassal, so that powerful vassals count more.
  • In the current system, you have to do this with expected vs actual legitmacy anyways, so making everything an everage would actually simplifiy things.
• Apply some or all of these modifiers on a character-by-character, title-by-title, or province-by-province basis instead of as a global character modifier.
  • It makes sense for many of these modifiers, e.g., the short reign penalty should be higher for someone that views you as a usurper
  • Popular opinion is often modified at a province level based on things like culture and religion, so why not this too?
  • Things like vassalization acceptance should change by character rather than being a global modifer.
  • How would doing these calculations be substantially different or more difficult than what you have to do to figure out expected vs actual legitimacy?

Expectations --

• To me, what you get by adding in expectations is the whole point of a legitimacy metric. Legitimacy, the perception of a ruler's rightness to rule, is so dependent on the specific place and vassal. So in my opinion, making the vassal impacts be a secondary effect of legitmacy via expectations prioritizes the wrong thing.
• Different vassals should view your legitimacy differently. That's what legitimacy is: a perception by different people. A vassal's expectation of their ruler's legitimacy doesn't change based on the ruler, the ruler's legitimacy with regards to that vassal does.
• The game already has global character modifiers like prestige and renown. In terms of gameplay, I think it would be helpful to distinguish legitmacy as different by having it use a different system.

UI Display -- some options:

• You already have bullets for average expected vs actual legitmacy, which are averages.
• Using the legitmacy bar you have, show (weighted) average legitmacy on the bar. When you hover over a number or segment of the bar with your cursor, have a tooltip detailing the impacts and listing the vassals at that level.
• In the top text, summarize the impacts the range of modifiers have and then list the number of powerful vassals, vassals, and others that are at each level of legitimacy. E.g., "Range of Effects based on level of legitmacy: *Short Reign Duration: +100(red) to -25 (green), *Massively increased(red) to slightly reduced(green)"
• Describe all levels of legitmacy with a short blurb and display a count of vassals at level. Have detailed modifiers available for inspection in a popup tooltip.
• Moving some of this to a title window would also be an option. There are already things that you have to go there to see and it wouldn't hurt to have a few more.

Thanks for your work on the game, and I am looking forward to the expansion regardless of the form legitimacy takes!

 

[merulaalba]

I hope there will be a legend for Basil the Bulgar slayer

Same here. As he never blinded all those Bulgarians. Instead, it was a legend invented by the Komnenian emperors to legitimize their position through martial skills and military conquest, especially compared to incapable civilian predecessors.

 

[Antimonum]

I hope there will be a legend for Basil the Bulgar slayer

That is only possible if their is a Basil II. That means only in 1066 Start if there is a living Macedonian Dynasty character, which I think there is none.

 

[mmastro00]

Is legitimacy affected by religion? If a new ruler comes into a Kingdom that let's say is predominantly Christian and they are Norse Asatru, shouldn't their legitimacy be extremely low?