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unmerged(2456)

Pure Evil Genius
Mar 29, 2001
11.211
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www.hero6.com
In CK1 lots of courtiers were spawned to fill courts. Because the AI liked to create and revoke titles, constantly this would spawn numerous unconnected courtiers of whom most would never be used and in general eat up valuable cpu resources. After remembering my days of Ghenghis Khan II there was a great innovation in that game that could be used here: searching for local talent.

Instead I'd propose that no courtiers ever get spawned like this and if their is a lack of courtiers, the ruler can have a option (through a button for players) to search for local talent or search for a local bride.

What happens is for court positions, nearby the court position there could be a choice to "search for local talent" button and if the player choses it, a small amount of gold (1 duncat/demesne province, x2 for duke, x4 for king) is spent. The quality of the individual is randomly generated with some weight for slightly better stats the more demesne you have and the higher your title, especially in the relevant stat, though that one will always be decent (barring traits), (more places to search and better chance someone of note will show up for more prestigious post). You will get to see their traits, but not the rest of their stats and can hire them or not. If you do, you lose a certain % of prestige for hiring a not-well-connected courtier. If you don't, the character is deleted, ie doesn't take up any more resources. The courtiers are always male.

For vassals, its similar, but you click on the province you want to be the capital and you can chose to search for a local bishop or grant a local baron the title. The courtiers are always male and will not specialize in any stat like the other court positions. Outisde that they are exactly like the previous one.

For brides, this one would be by clicking either somewhere on your character page or capital and it searches for a member of the opposite sex. If you chose to betrothe them, they automatically become your spouse.

The reason for not showing stats is that searching for these unknown characters your taking a risk going with someone no one really knows.
 
I like this as an option available to rulers, and a useful one at that. Yet I don't beleive that it should completely remove the standing courts in the game. I think the game would just feel empty without a court of nobles millling about wasting their time ;), yet developing inter-personal relations and fleshing out the complexity of politics. I loved seeing a family history of marshalls or stewards in my courts and it helped the immersion factor for me.

Perhaps instead of many different characters sitting around using up CPU, there could be a smaller number of prominent families in your court. Then it is from these that you hit the search for tallent button and draw from those specific lines. All the while the families could develop relations with eachother and vie for your favor and also needing to be placated and not allowed to grow too powerful.
 
EUIII+HttT has the system where you can 'hire' (create) advisors. Something like this could be ported over to CK2.

Since CK is about dynasties, I'd prefer to have some "inner dynasties" representing local nobility. I liked when my seneschal was the king's best friend, but the prince hated the seneschal's son and they ended up being enemies, and eventually the seneschal's son left or was killed for some reason.

Developers should keep in mind that the "soap opera" feeling is one of the best things CK achieved. If they can make a CK2 that keeps us playing even when there's no war or real action going on, just by the thrill of what's happening to the characters, they will have made a great game.
 
Developers should keep in mind that the "soap opera" feeling is one of the best things CK achieved. If they can make a CK2 that keeps us playing even when there's no war or real action going on, just by the thrill of what's happening to the characters, they will have made a great game.

Agree with that. One of the main challenges for the game though would be IMHO finding that delicate balance between avoiding a micromanagement hell for large kingdoms, but being at the same time interesting enough for non-expanding one-province counties.

---

"So what do you play right now? ArmA II or Grand Theft Auto IV or..."
"No, no, no... I'm more that medieval-soap-opera type of guy."
"Oh, I see. Sorry."
 
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I wonder if we'll need other courtiers than the barons families (and our own of course), as having barons families in each province look like a good way both to fill the court, and allow courtiers to marry and form families at your service for many generations while limiting the number of courtiers families at the same time.

I mean if barons can marry (not improbable) there will be 2 to 5 or 6 (?) dynasties living in each county, a large choice of people to help any count (especially rich counts as number of baronies will be based on how rich the province is) and an huge one to help bigger lords having several provinces in direct demesne.

Now having 2 to 5 or 6 full families everywhere would also mean too much people if indirect family of barons are simulated (ie : sons of the brothers of a baron) or if other families of random courtiers are added to that so I imagine that either only the baron in title will be allowed to marry in each generation, or that barons relatives will leave the court with their families if not given a position or title when they reach adult age.

About recruiting new courtiers, I think it only have to happen when a new barony is added to a county (I imagine that when the province becoming richer the count is allowed to create one) or when a baron slot is emptied because this family die or recieve a bigger title.

ps : now what I guess may be completely wrong about how the barons will work
 
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Since CK is about dynasties, I'd prefer to have some "inner dynasties" representing local nobility. I liked when my seneschal was the king's best friend, but the prince hated the seneschal's son and they ended up being enemies, and eventually the seneschal's son left or was killed for some reason.

Developers should keep in mind that the "soap opera" feeling is one of the best things CK achieved. If they can make a CK2 that keeps us playing even when there's no war or real action going on, just by the thrill of what's happening to the characters, they will have made a great game.
There were numerous cases of merchants marrying into nobility, peasants and craftsman becoming powerful clergy. Ditto for advisers. That, and lower nobility, is whom these courtiers you search for would be.
 
Since CK is about dynasties, I'd prefer to have some "inner dynasties" representing local nobility. I liked when my seneschal was the king's best friend, but the prince hated the seneschal's son and they ended up being enemies, and eventually the seneschal's son left or was killed for some reason.

If done like the OP suggests, then you wouldn't loose that, it would rather be reinforced. Instead of your court being flooded by randomly generated people that have to be killed off by illness events like in CK I you would basically just have the offspring of the landed nobility flinging around from court to court complemented by occasional newcommers to the world of high politics.
 
There were numerous cases of merchants marrying into nobility, peasants and craftsman becoming powerful clergy. Ditto for advisers. That, and lower nobility, is whom these courtiers you search for would be.

Actually I'd say that the courtiers should be 90% lower nobility, 8% burghers and 2% peasants (just random numbers but giving the correct idea). Merchants marrying into nobility happened almost exclusively at the lower end. Many influencial city dwellers were actually knightly families (patricians) and thus part of what is now called the lesser nobility. Some of the remaining burghers indeed managed to gain influence in courts. Finally, peasants had very little influence at all, even the church was by a large margin run by sons of noblemen and men or women of serf origin could at best hope to gain leadership over non noble monasteries and little beyond that...
 
I'd also add that these Baron families be exempt from the Inheritance Laws, or at least they are locked into either Salic Primogeniture or Salic Consanquinity, to block the merging of Baronies amongst all of the Provinces and in with higher Titles. I just can't see the benefit of my Ruler owning title to a patch-work of Baronies all over the place.

True, it would be historically accurate but it'd just add one more layer of increased complexity to the game.