Simplest way to reduce map fragmentation, make the game more challenging, and more historical without any radical changes

[Metz]

I think with one simple change you can accomplish all three of these objectives.

That would be to reduce the amount of commoners that appear in your court and replace them with minor noble families. It would be more realistic to have minor nobles than commoners interacting with nobility. Part of the reason why map fragmentation or border gore occurs is due to long distance marriages that even restricted diplomatic range can’t prevent.

By upping the base reluctance of different culture and religion marriages and having minor nobles in your realm, nobles can opt to marry them instead. The minor noble families would try to elevate themselves by requesting accolades, court positions, cabinet positions, marriages/seducing into the noble family, and titles. They would opt to go for baronies first and can scheme against you if they have the right traits to do so. Maybe even add a mini interaction that allows them to ask for foreign/liege rival funds to help undermine their liege. Commoners on the other hand just come and go and it is less realistic to make a random commoner a baron or a count if you are short on candidates to give titles too.

The higher your title, the more noble families appear at court. This would add a long term realistic challenge as well as a more elaborate story to your realms history as these minor noble families would grow and progress alongside yours.

Key points:
- Reduced bordergore
- More memorable characters to interact with in the long term
- Extra internal challenges to deal with
- More historical and realistic
- Easy to implement and not performance intensive

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Easy to implement and not performance intensive

I'm not against your idea but I can't say that I agree with this point, considering that you'd be adding god-knows-how-many dynasties and family relationships.

 

[Metz]

I'm not against your idea but I can't say that I agree with this point, considering that you'd be adding god-knows-how-many dynasties and family relationships.

You are basically trading 12 random commoners for 2 six member or 3 four member families that may persist or die out. You can even argue that since commoners come and go all the time, there is more of them throughout a gameplay. Minor noble families can’t be eliminated just like that so they persist and don’t spawn as randomly and frequently as useless commoners. The performance comes from individual characters being alive. I’d rather have less but more useful characters to interact with than a bunch of random commoners you can’t do much with.