There are two unrelated complaints I’ve heard about CKIII which I think are somewhat connected. These two are players wanting to interact more with courtier families and the complaints and, especially coming up to All Under Heaven, concerns about game performance. The latter is discussed far more often than the former for obvious reasons. I think one feature, mentioned (as far as I can tell) first by @Metz quite recently could approach both concerns. I’d like to continue building on Metz’s idea, which I will quote below.
Metz’s idea was to have what they called “family units.” I think this is best represented by a character who represents multiple people. One mechanical character could represent a minor family, or, at a more complex level, a trade caravan, a small religious order, or any other minorly important groups the player may want to interact with. Think of it kinda like a pop in Vicky, but generally representing a closer and smaller group of people. With a new type of resource specific to group characters, called Membership (that’s what I’ll call it here) or something similar, the game could have a hidden, barely-simulated pool of characters. The level of simulation within the Membership pool might be just age and gender, maybe family relationships, for the members. All the resources would be kept at the group character level. Traits would be generated when you create a member to fully simulate. This would be based on rng, culture, religion, group character traits, etc. A little bit of some resources might be subtracted and given to the character.
In terms of performance it could reduce the amount of characters being fully simulated on the map at any time. For example, that event which gives you the choice to welcome a family of a different religion, have them convert, or whatever, would instead of creating five or six separate characters, would create one. If the player wants each of those characters simulated, they could create them from out of the family to have them fully simulated. Over an entire game, with the entire world simulated, plus East Asia, that would help performance.
In terms of flavour and gameplay, I think there is more potential here than for performance. Personally, this is a mechanic I would have fun with. Being able to track and interact with courtier families throughout the game sounds fun. You could watch them play court politics and whatnot. This would work super well with the admin government, and the way it already tracks families. It could allow for more accurate disease death numbers. Additionally, it would be able to better represent something super key to China’s history, its massive population.
Of course, there’s a balance in how much this idea leans towards flavour or performance. In a more limited usage, it would be better on performance, in a more expanded usage, it would be more flavourful. I’ll give two examples of how the system could be implemented, with little stories following a player using the feature, and the second one is a more expanded and complex usage of the mechanic. I'll put the examples in spoilers, because that's fun and I don't see why I wouldn't!
I do see a few issues with this idea. First off, it is ambitious. It is only an idea and a suggestion. Of course, I have no expectation that this could be implemented at all. Paradox might have the entire game’s content cycle planned out already, for all I know, though I also know they are open to suggestions. Secondly, and this is more of an implementation-level issue, how can you prevent the AI from going crazy and creating thousands of group characters and then bringing out thousands of simulated characters from them? If this happens, it would make the feature worse, rather than better, for performance. My suggestion would be to entirely prevent the AI from using the mechanic to create fully simulated characters out of group characters. Additionally, they could be limited to creating a group character more than the player is. Then, to prevent this mechanic from entirely becoming useless in terms of performance enhancing, AIs and the player could be allowed to have multiple knights and spouses be the same group character, along with multiple courtier positions, which you can already do with single-person characters. This idea doesn’t really sit well with me, but I can’t think of anything else to solve the issue it solves. Thirdly, implementation with already existing dlc is tough, which is a general Paradox issue. That’s just how it is. The devs may have considered this idea already for all I know, it’s definitely not a crazy out-of-the-box idea or anything. Additionally, I don’t know enough about the game’s code to even know if this would help performance.
Regardless, I think it is an interesting idea worthy of discussion. I know one of the Paradox staff, @JonZone, already took note of Metz’s original comment. Hopefully, it can go somewhere!
Thank you to Metz for a lot of the basis for this!
Metz’s idea was to have what they called “family units.” I think this is best represented by a character who represents multiple people. One mechanical character could represent a minor family, or, at a more complex level, a trade caravan, a small religious order, or any other minorly important groups the player may want to interact with. Think of it kinda like a pop in Vicky, but generally representing a closer and smaller group of people. With a new type of resource specific to group characters, called Membership (that’s what I’ll call it here) or something similar, the game could have a hidden, barely-simulated pool of characters. The level of simulation within the Membership pool might be just age and gender, maybe family relationships, for the members. All the resources would be kept at the group character level. Traits would be generated when you create a member to fully simulate. This would be based on rng, culture, religion, group character traits, etc. A little bit of some resources might be subtracted and given to the character.
In terms of performance it could reduce the amount of characters being fully simulated on the map at any time. For example, that event which gives you the choice to welcome a family of a different religion, have them convert, or whatever, would instead of creating five or six separate characters, would create one. If the player wants each of those characters simulated, they could create them from out of the family to have them fully simulated. Over an entire game, with the entire world simulated, plus East Asia, that would help performance.
In terms of flavour and gameplay, I think there is more potential here than for performance. Personally, this is a mechanic I would have fun with. Being able to track and interact with courtier families throughout the game sounds fun. You could watch them play court politics and whatnot. This would work super well with the admin government, and the way it already tracks families. It could allow for more accurate disease death numbers. Additionally, it would be able to better represent something super key to China’s history, its massive population.
Of course, there’s a balance in how much this idea leans towards flavour or performance. In a more limited usage, it would be better on performance, in a more expanded usage, it would be more flavourful. I’ll give two examples of how the system could be implemented, with little stories following a player using the feature, and the second one is a more expanded and complex usage of the mechanic. I'll put the examples in spoilers, because that's fun and I don't see why I wouldn't!
The player, the King of France, has a French Catholic courtier dynasty, the Chasseur family, assigned to the role of Master of the Hunt. This doesn't suggest that every family member is the French Master of the Hunt; this family has one or more members assigned to that role, and the family generally helps with their duties. There is, as always, some level of abstraction. The family was created 38 years ago, when the player used the "Invite Minor Family" decision and has been loyal to the Capet dynasty since. The Casseur group character has a Membership of 17. This, along with the character's group traits, provides some bonus to their aptitude. The player wants to interact directly with one of the family members to make one specific individual their Jester. They click on the group character to interact with them, select the "Fill Court Position" interaction, find the Jester position, and get a Jester from the family. They get a young man named Jean, who has an average aptitude. The player mouses over the Membership resource to see Jean, who is now listed. With Jean busy entertaining the court, his Membership no longer adds to the aptitude of the Master of the Hunt position his family traditionally works. The player must wait for some time before requesting another member from the Chasseur family. Next time, the player might request a knight. The family could work multiple court positions, and this would be another value that affects aptitude.
The player, the Sultan of Galicia, Ali "Longshanks" Hæsteining, faces a French-led Holy War for their title. The player had created a Holy Order, the Swords of Allah, 18 years before the war. The Swords of Allah have a group character associated with them, along with the typical Order mechanics. The group character as a Membership of 12, representing their knights, and 1200 troops. In times of peace, the player requests knights for their army from The Swords and borrows money from them. When raised for war, the Order creates 9 knight characters, which join the 3 permanently simulated members, the Sultan's two younger sons and the leader of the Order, Ibrahim. The non-permanent knights are destroyed when the war ends, returning to the Membership number, and at the next war, they would be represented by different randomly generated knights. During the war, the player finds a knight, Yahya, whom they want to keep as a fully simulated member of the Order. The player clicks on Yahya and chooses to make him a permanently simulated member. After the Holy War, the player recruits this character to their court with the Order group character's approval.
I do see a few issues with this idea. First off, it is ambitious. It is only an idea and a suggestion. Of course, I have no expectation that this could be implemented at all. Paradox might have the entire game’s content cycle planned out already, for all I know, though I also know they are open to suggestions. Secondly, and this is more of an implementation-level issue, how can you prevent the AI from going crazy and creating thousands of group characters and then bringing out thousands of simulated characters from them? If this happens, it would make the feature worse, rather than better, for performance. My suggestion would be to entirely prevent the AI from using the mechanic to create fully simulated characters out of group characters. Additionally, they could be limited to creating a group character more than the player is. Then, to prevent this mechanic from entirely becoming useless in terms of performance enhancing, AIs and the player could be allowed to have multiple knights and spouses be the same group character, along with multiple courtier positions, which you can already do with single-person characters. This idea doesn’t really sit well with me, but I can’t think of anything else to solve the issue it solves. Thirdly, implementation with already existing dlc is tough, which is a general Paradox issue. That’s just how it is. The devs may have considered this idea already for all I know, it’s definitely not a crazy out-of-the-box idea or anything. Additionally, I don’t know enough about the game’s code to even know if this would help performance.
Regardless, I think it is an interesting idea worthy of discussion. I know one of the Paradox staff, @JonZone, already took note of Metz’s original comment. Hopefully, it can go somewhere!
Thank you to Metz for a lot of the basis for this!
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