Earlier start dates?

[Arcvalons]

So in the survey, I found this particular answer interesting:

Push the start date back. Have it begin from the invasion of the Dothraki from the east, in honor of the upcoming Horse Lords DLC. Players can try to survive as Essaria, Sarnor, Omber, the Ibbenese or the Qaathi cities, or lay waste to their stone houses as a Dothraki khal. Meanwhile the Free Cities could be given a decision to claim New Valyria and be sent down an event chain like the War of Conquest until they win or are defeated. Westeros can be independent with an invasion of the riverlands by the Iron Isles and that can become a battleground for the other kingdoms as well (plus, the Lannisters will still have Brightroar!) The War of Conquest bookmark can focus solely on Aegon's invasion of Westeros/Essos. In the bookmarks current state, all Aegon does is railroad the outcome of the war with his one decision and then his AI does nothing regardless. Plus he has no events afterward to simulate his invasion. His absence will let people play as his ancestors and build a new Targaryen dynasty if they wish. With GRRM promising a book on the full Targaryen history after the completion of the GoT saga, any character inaccuracies can be fixed later.

So I was wondering, are there any plans to add something like this in the future? I find that era particularly interesting since it's much more dynamic than the other start-dates, there were no seven kingdoms in Westeros but dozens, and the Free Cities were still largely unconsolidated.

 

[IvanGroznyIV]

I would guess the big limiter on earlier start dates would be the Valyrian Freehold. Any start date prior to the Doom would require a new map, since the Freehold sat on provinces that on the current map are uninhabitable. I would also mention that Valyria would be insanely overpowered, but balance has never been that important to these things.

But yes, I would love a scenario set during ancient history, with Westeros divided between numerous petty kings rather than bound together into the giant blobs of the Lord Paramounts or the giant blob of the Iron Throne . A chance to unite the North under the Red Kings of House Bolton, and flay all the Starks I can find to use their skins a cloaks, would be welcome.

I don't expect to ever see it, though.

 

[Arcvalons]

This is still after the Doom though, just maybe a couple decades after, rather than a century. The Freehold of Valyria is no more but its legacy still resonates through the east, there is that guy in Qohor who proclaimed himself the first Emperor of Valyria, the great Sarnor is one of the mightiest countries in the world as the Dothraki barely control the provinces around the Mother of Mountains, the Free Cities just control their own cities while what would be their future territories are still held by independent feudal rulers. Religiously, the faith of R'hllor is rapidly spreading from Volantis to the rest of the continent, which largely practices local religions, or Valyrian...

All in all, it would be much more dynamic.

 

[Orinsul]

I'd like a just after the doom setting.

 

[PortalCakeFace]

Personally, a pre-doom scenario would be awesome. It'd probably see dragon mechanics expanded upon with new traits, like 'Dragonlord' or 'Dragon Horn'. Also, since there are dragons, there is also a lot more magic involved...

 

[blackninja9939]

Personally, a pre-doom scenario would be awesome. It'd probably see dragon mechanics expanded upon with new traits, like 'Dragonlord' or 'Dragon Horn'. Also, since there are dragons, there is also a lot more magic involved...

Map = Not dynamic = Would need a second mod with equal work to the current one again

 

[JodelDiplom]

An Age of Heroes scenario with only Westeros on the map would be awesome. I don't think you actually need Essos for such a scenario to be fun to play.

 

[PortalCakeFace]

Map = Not dynamic = Would need a second mod with equal work to the current one again

We could play pretend and just imagine the smoking sea isn't there...

 

[just_a_beaver]

A pre-Doom scenario would be great. Maybe with a "move out of Valyria" mechanic could be made but with a HUGE penalty to one's Gold and whatnot. It would be very interesting to have another dynasty other than the Targaryens escape the Doom, or somehow build something big enough to protect your family during the Doom, but I highly doubt that would even be possible, but sadly, that may not be applicable because then the map would have to change and break the Valyrian peninsula.

 

[Arcvalons]

But guys. A right-after-the-Doom scenario is possible. And that'd be more interesting than having an empire that stretches around half the world AND has 40 dynasties each with dozens of dragons; that'd be like the Abbasid blob but forty times worse.

 

[D Toccs]

Extending the history of every family and every title in the mod backwards by 100 years (4 generations at least) is a huuuuge undertaking.

 

[blackninja9939]

We could play pretend and just imagine the smoking sea isn't there...
Also, we wouldn't need a second mod with equal work, because only the Valyrian mainland changes.

It would be at least 3-5 generations of history along for every single title in the mod which would take a long time. Not to mention new mechanics for the Old Empire.

This isn't to say a pre-doom scenario won't even happen, but that if and when it does it will take a long while to do.

 

[Orinsul]

Extending the history of every family and every title in the mod backwards by 100 years (4 generations at least) is a huuuuge undertaking.

What if, we just pretended that for the families who haven't already have ancestors, everyone just had kids crazy old? Like 80+ years old.
Then it'd just be one extra character per house, which is still a crazy amount of work but still, less than the other way.

 

[D Toccs]

You don't understand. Apart from the LP houses in westeros and a handful of houses in the reach snd vale, NO family has any history at all earlier than 7975ish.
You could change the start date to 7901 and try to start a game but it will CTD from having to generate so many characters.

Adding 4 or 5 generations to every family/title is the only way to make it work.

 

[JodelDiplom]

You don't understand. Apart from the LP houses in westeros and a handful of houses in the reach snd vale, NO family has any history at all earlier than 7975ish.
You could change the start date to 7901 and try to start a game but it will CTD from having to generate so many characters.

Adding 4 or 5 generations to every family/title is the only way to make it work.

Write a random family tree generator to extend the family trees backwards for an easy version 0 of the mod. Then take your time replacing random generated family members by "proper" characters, where you feel it's necessary.

It's not as of CK2 isn't already a "random family tree generator" All the tools - name lists etc - are there already. If you don't want to write the code for randomly distributing traits, stats etc, then just let the GOT mod run on autopilot for ~500 years, save the game, extract ~ 10.000 character from the save file, rearrange them into procedurally generated family-tree-extensions, and re-name them with randomly picked first names. Bam, done?

 

[D Toccs]

I can't tell if you're joking or not.

 

[Orinsul]

You don't understand. Apart from the LP houses in westeros and a handful of houses in the reach snd vale, NO family has any history at all earlier than 7975ish.
You could change the start date to 7901 and try to start a game but it will CTD from having to generate so many characters.

Adding 4 or 5 generations to every family/title is the only way to make it work.

Sure, or what I actually suggested.
Simply IGNORE the generations inbetween, and make one character, per title, listed as the parent of the bleeding years character. Ignoring that plausibly you'd need more generations in the family tree.
Now starting at any date in-between the new scenario and the current, would probably CTD and cause day deaths of from age of 99% of landed characters, but the new scenario wouldn't as you'd have a character for every title, exactly the same as the current start dates.

Adding one implausible generation to every family/title, is another way to make it work. It wouldn't crash, and it doesn't require not understanding how the game works.
It just requires not caring that the generations between the scenarios aren't represented with characters and that the family tree would list one as the direct parent of the other.

There are other ways to make it work too, those obfuscated line of X characters to fill in gaps would work is one, but way more effort than just IGNORING the generations in-between/listing in the history that they didn't have kids until they were around/over 100 years old, as that's two characters per title instead of one.

 

[D Toccs]

Everyone in this thread is talking about adding characters to EVERY FAMILY AND EVERY TITLE in the mod as though that is just some simple thing that can be knocked out in a couple of hours.

Character and title history is the most tedious part of modding CK2 and even the best tools don't stop that. We have a character code generator and it still took well over a year for Essos to be fully populated.
Something that makes it much much more tedious is inserting new history into existing stuff. For example it would be less tedious to redo from scratch all the history in Essos to cover a 400 year period instead of 300, than it would be to add 1,2,3 or 4 generations to all of them at the beginning, and before you say "well just do that then." I would refer you to my above comment about how it took over a year to do all of that the first time.

I'm not against the idea of extending the history, but you need to understand what you are asking and why I'm not going to be in a rush to do it.

 

[Orinsul]

Actually everyone understands already. Things have been said like 'which is still a crazy amount of work'.

NO one is failing to understand, well except you in your keenness to assume everyone but yourself is too stupid to grasp basic concepts like how long it takes to make new characters.
Everyone understands how damned much work it would be, you might have noticed but nobody is volunteering to actually do it, just vaguely hoping it might be done. No one is even really asking it be done, much less that you do it personally, just saying it'd be cool if it was and exploring the idea of how it might be.
Pretty much everyone post in this thread has also alluded to how much effort this would take, often volunteering new problems that would prevent it too, even with imagining corners that might be cut to lessen it, another clue that everyone in this thread understands what they're talking about.

 

[D Toccs]

You do me a disservice ser. I am never rude, arrogant or aggressive, especially when I am speaking as a member of the dev team for this mod.