Dealing with CK1's Dynasty Convergence

[unmerged(2456)]

Early in the games there are a plethera of Dynasty options for rulers around the world. However, as the games went on due to a competent AI and compitent players the numbers of ruling dynasties would slowly erode until in many games only a few ruled all of Europe, whether they were a king, duke or count. This is in large part due to the primary laws of salic and semi-salic which promoted such convergence.Im addition, there was also the problem of most counties having only 1 last name for character spwans which exacerbated the situation further. This also had the consequence in later patches of giving unrealistically hiigh chances of ibeing inbred, even from extremely distant relatives simply because they shared the same last name.

Historically this was not the case and also many times relatives find reasons for taking up a new dynasty name, sometimes as simple as being struck from the family line. Furthermore, many of these rulers had no last name and thus their dynasty name may have been linked to their capital's location.

I'm hoping that this game will find some way to rectify that issue.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

This also had the consequence in later patches of giving unrealistically hiigh chances of ibeing inbred, even from extremely distant relatives simply because they shared the same last name.

This was changed in DV, only if you shared a grandparent you could get the inbred trait


Another reason why dynasties disappeared was that the AI always revoked the titles of his vassals to give them to his sons. I hope this gets addressed to somehow.

 

[sanmartin]

OTOH, it's not entirely unrealistic to have Europe's dynasties slowly merge until just a few dynasties rule most of Europe, and most of them are inter-related; after all, this would be historical. What I think would make things more interesting would be bastards having different last-names, possibly randomly generated (or taking their mother's last name, if mistresses are better modeled), and having "new" dynasties spring up that way.

 

[unmerged(133776)]

For me anyway, I only care about MY Dynasty and having a Rival Dynasty I can pick on (if I play in France I always hate the Capets, if in Iberia I tend to pick on the D'Aquitaines. One time I actually cheered in real life when the D'Aquitaine Duke instituted Gavelkind - lol).

Other than that, I wouldn't actually care who rules what elsewhere.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

The problem with the bastard thing is in my De Hautville game I had an event that allowed me to place bastard son in my line of succession.

Anyways I'd like to see landless nobles play a larger role. Something like if a member of my court is the siege leader he will get a claim on that province.

Edited* makes more sense now

 

[DPS]

The problem with the bastard thing is in my De Hautville game I had an event that allowed me to be my bastard son in my line of succession.

Anyways I'd like to see landless nobles play a larger role. Something like if a member of my court is the siege leader he will get a claim on that province.

I'd say that an event that allowed you to be your own son, bastard or not, is seriously bugged, unless it's in a SF game involving time travel.



I know that's not what you meant (at least, I don't think that's what you meant), but I'm not sure what you did mean.

 

[LordofSaxony]

OTOH, it's not entirely unrealistic to have Europe's dynasties slowly merge until just a few dynasties rule most of Europe, and most of them are inter-related; after all, this would be historical. What I think would make things more interesting would be bastards having different last-names, possibly randomly generated (or taking their mother's last name, if mistresses are better modeled), and having "new" dynasties spring up that way.

Wasn't the Hapsburgs a major player in basically being connected to everyone by bloodline? You know.. having a scoreboard of the most influential family would be kinda cool. Perhaps if you are actually on the top ten list, you get some bonus prestige, which would actually make sense.

 

[sanmartin]

The problem with the bastard thing is in my De Hautville game I had an event that allowed me to be my bastard son in my line of succession.

Anyways I'd like to see landless nobles play a larger role. Something like if a member of my court is the siege leader he will get a claim on that province.

Well, in the event announcing the birth of the bastard, you'd get two options: recognize the bastard (born with your last name with the bastard trait and acts like a normal child after that), or you can refuse to recognize the bastard, who is then born with the mother's or a random last name and will grow up resentful, or maybe even in another court, which could also add another dynamic to the game (for example, your non-recognized bastard ends up in your rival's court, and he decides to stir up trouble for you by fortifying the bastard's claim).

 

[LordofSaxony]

Well, in the event announcing the birth of the bastard, you'd get two options: recognize the bastard (born with your last name with the bastard trait and acts like a normal child after that), or you can refuse to recognize the bastard, who is then born with the mother's or a random last name and will grow up resentful, or maybe even in another court, which could also add another dynamic to the game (for example, your non-recognized bastard ends up in your rival's court, and he decides to stir up trouble for you by fortifying the bastard's claim).

If you recognize a bastard, then your non-bastard children should be resentful and view that bastard as a rival, otherwise there isn't much harm in just recognizing every bastard you have.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

OTOH, it's not entirely unrealistic to have Europe's dynasties slowly merge until just a few dynasties rule most of Europe, and most of them are inter-related; after all, this would be historical.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but the gameplay mechanics make it go way beyond what happened in reality to the point in many games there would only be 3-4 dynasties covering the entire map...and that includes non-christian dynasties.

What I think would make things more interesting would be bastards having different last-names, possibly randomly generated (or taking their mother's last name, if mistresses are better modeled), and having "new" dynasties spring up that way.

That's one idea. There are a few other ideas:

• Leaving the family due to interal dispute (there are a lot of those here)
• Move in location (often the most common reason for a name change)
• Becoming an independent lord when another member of the same dynasty exists elsewhere - in order to distance yourself.
• Refounding an nation/empire. Babur did not rename his dunasty after Timur even though he claimed lineage from him. He named it Mughul.
  Part of the problem with the old system was it confused the last names with dynasties.

 

[A_Dane]

This was changed in DV, only if you shared a grandparent you could get the inbred trait


Another reason why dynasties disappeared was that the AI always revoked the titles of his vassals to give them to his sons. I hope this gets addressed to somehow.

This, the single most destructive thing about CK immersion, was that the ammount of "unrelated to the king" nobles would diminish with every generation, and while it shouldn't be impossible, it was/is just too easy in CK1 to clean your country of anyone else but your family. Just get your lesser sons placed on a ducal title, and watch as they do a cleansing of the counts s:

In an ireland game i had, i think i saved 4-5 dynasties from extinction (the last of the lines somehow ended at me), including the Palaiologus family, Welf's, Athelings and 2 other, rather prominent, familes. All of those 5 died out on the male line everywhere else but in Good old Ireland (And Scotland).

It always saddened me to look at s:

 

[jordarkelf]

By far the major problem IMO is that the AI will always revoke its vassal's lands, while at the same time they too can be overthrown, so in a few generations all non-random dynasties can disappear.
And even if a royal family keeps its lands, by the 1300s all its vassals will either be of the same family or random characters, none of the minor dynasties will have survived.

I really hope CK2 can prevent that.

 

[.Spartan]

OTOH, it's not entirely unrealistic to have Europe's dynasties slowly merge until just a few dynasties rule most of Europe, and most of them are inter-related; after all, this would be historical. What I think would make things more interesting would be bastards having different last-names, possibly randomly generated (or taking their mother's last name, if mistresses are better modeled), and having "new" dynasties spring up that way.

I'm all for this option but I would also like the ability to name my heir and if he happens to be a bastard son then well - civil wars happen!

 

[Orinsul]

there was also the problem of most counties having only 1 last name for character spwans which exacerbated the situation further.

What if dynasties dont work that way anymore
what if you have a dynasty_id that is generated as the game goes on and the dynasty takes a name from the dynasty names file
not being pre-defined

so you can have three 'Winchester' families all with the same name from the localisation, all randomly generated from the same province. But with different dynasty_ids
so that no random courtier ever comes from a pre-existent dynasty?

and if you had a huge number of dynasty names to choose from it would avoid being too repetitive. But more importantly, you wouldn't end up with all the ruling houses of europe coming from a randomly created dynasty with a limitless supply of new and unrelated members.

and you'd never had a dynasty member turn up who was completely unrelated to you

and itd be nice if bastards had a different dynasty too. created on the go with a mechanic in place to name them
for example if your King William d'Normandie has a bastard
that bastard might be of a dynasty called Fitzwilliam or maybe for the whole dynasty a single bastard dynasty FitzNormandy or something.
just a thought

 

[Andrzej I]

By far the major problem IMO is that the AI will always revoke its vassal's lands, while at the same time they too can be overthrown, so in a few generations all non-random dynasties can disappear.
And even if a royal family keeps its lands, by the 1300s all its vassals will either be of the same family or random characters, none of the minor dynasties will have survived.

I really hope CK2 can prevent that.

Seconded. I hope they take out peaceful revoking of lands entirely, personally. It just seems a bit ahistorical to me that the liege would, without cause, ask for a vassal's land and potential receive it. Maybe if you could only revoke titles that you had claims on, that could work, but I sincerely hope that they disable random and frequent revoking of titles. As Jordarkelf mentions, it kills off all the minor dynasties, several of which (for the 1066 scenario) are dynasties that historically rose to prominence, yet rarely are able to in CK due to revoking titles.

 

[LordofSaxony]

By far the major problem IMO is that the AI will always revoke its vassal's lands, while at the same time they too can be overthrown, so in a few generations all non-random dynasties can disappear.
And even if a royal family keeps its lands, by the 1300s all its vassals will either be of the same family or random characters, none of the minor dynasties will have survived.

I really hope CK2 can prevent that.

Perhaps new dynasties can be created, which represents commoners being elevated to a noble status. These would be represented as courtiers and/or randomly created barons which the AI may pick from time to time, so you'll always see "new blood" in the game.

But, ya, I see your point. I'm also guilty of doing that myself and I'm not even the AI. At one point I had a lot of western Europe a part of my family by removing vassals and placing my own family there, time and time again. Eventually all western Europe shared my "of Leon" last name.

 

[Andrzej I]

Come to think of it, actually... why not allow courtiers to marry? That's the main reason all the dynasties in CK I died off. They lost their titles, ran to a random (sometimes non-Christian) court and were never given a title again, so they ended up never marrying (again). If courtiers could marry, that could be prevented. maybe it could be done via events, have it so the courtiers go to their liege and ask permission to marry Lady So-and-so, or something.

 

[unmerged(31881)]

Come to think of it, actually... why not allow courtiers to marry? That's the main reason all the dynasties in CK I died off. They lost their titles, ran to a random (sometimes non-Christian) court and were never given a title again, so they ended up never marrying (again). If courtiers could marry, that could be prevented. maybe it could be done via events, have it so the courtiers go to their liege and ask permission to marry Lady So-and-so, or something.

iirc CK1 v1.00 had that. (i.e. CK, before patching)

The upside is that you could keep dynasties alive even if they didn't have a title.

The downside was a lot more courtiers.

Without going back to CKv1.00 (i.e. full control of marrying all courtiers) - i wonder how feasible it would be to have unrelated courtiers independently getting married. But then you'd have to have more people entering the priesthood, dying in battle/on Crusade, in childbirth, of disease. And if the AI set aside 10% of its annual budget to assassinations, maybe it would work out...

(BTW, my strategy to countering dyanistic convergence was to start by only appointing daughters as vassals. When the land reverted via inheritance their courtiers would generally go to the ruler's court. So when there was a shortage of daughers or a poor ruler hitting the demesne efficiency limit, i would give the random courtiers the land based on whether they had a unique surname.)

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Come to think of it, actually... why not allow courtiers to marry? That's the main reason all the dynasties in CK I died off. They lost their titles, ran to a random (sometimes non-Christian) court and were never given a title again, so they ended up never marrying (again). If courtiers could marry, that could be prevented. maybe it could be done via events, have it so the courtiers go to their liege and ask permission to marry Lady So-and-so, or something.

But then again in CK1 we already had the problem of overfilled courts, with 50+ characters. Now imagine that those characters marry and have 2 tot 3 children on average. How many characters will there be in the game then pretty soon ?

 

[LordofSaxony]

But then again in CK1 we already had the problem of overfilled courts, with 50+ characters. Now imagine that those characters marry and have 2 tot 3 children on average. How many characters will there be in the game then pretty soon ?

They could have an option where courtiers quietly retire to the countryside without telling you, or perhaps they do. This would happen if they are never used, and it's a way of just letting them go permanently.

So what are some good numbers for courtiers? Counts get 10, Dukes 20, Kings 30? Would that be more manageable? Just saying numbers for reference, not saying they would be literally those amounts, but if they hovered around those numbers.