Aight, straight to business. I've been playing around Byzantines recently and discovered some oversights/bugs that are sort of immersion or even gamebreaking.
1. Inflated amount of nobility.
Problem:
If you played as admin realm you know that after a couple of generations amount of noble families skyrocket because every time you grant Duchy it automatically creates a noble family. Byzantines start with about 10 families, after 100 years those are 30, at least, without any expansion even. Obviously most of them don't govern anything and basically *just exist* here. Now, some say that's one of the causes for late game lag, I don't know about that but at the very least this situation is immersion breaking because you can't divide your attention between so many houses, which causes the player to abstract and lose interest.
Solution:
First, hard cap on amount of noble families based on realm size. Something like realm size divided by 10, but no higher than 30. If you realm loses lands and current amount of families are higher than the cap, then you simply can't create new estates. Albeit not realistic, this is the simplest mechanical way of doing it.
Second, governorship should be granted without family estate by default. This instantly solves exponential nobility growth. Not every governor was a part of hereditary capital nobility because they got the title. You as a ruler want to elevate talented peasant boy and establish new noble family out of him? Well, grant him and appointment AND give money for building a family estate. Alternatively, he can build an estate on his own by paying money earned through service if nobility cap (see above) is not yet reached. Mechanically owning an estate in CK3 is for inheriting progress to the next character, but AI player doesn't need this in every case.
2. No domestic power balance.
Problem:
For some reason, imperial nobility does not care if you grant appointments to random lowborn characters or exclusively your own family. Now this is probably the most baffling on the list because it's goes against common sense. To be honest I don't even think there's need to explain this. Are you seriously telling me that a patriarch of ancient family will just watch me giving out land to random peasants? How many civil wars happened in Byzantium over less than this?
Solution:
In upcoming AUH update there's a new mechanic of house relationship. I suggest implementing this here. Every time appointment is handed to a character the game should check noble families on the matter of possible candidates, if the family has one (e. g. Adult, capable, male, etc.) then NOT giving land to him will decrease relations between ruler and vassal houses by some amount. Instead, giving lands to possible candidates improves relationship. Obviously you will blueball nobility more often than granting land, therefore negative and positive should be something like -20 and +60 to not break the game. And I mean I understand PDX fear of scaring off arcade player base just like with conclave, then make this maluses and bonuses microscopic like -2 and +6, but to not have this entirely is kinda crazy. This is simple mechanic that can increase immersion by a ton.
3. No in-game way to get rid of abundant families
Problem:
Basically what described above combines, families don't just die out, there is always a random child, a random woman that can't inherit anything but keep estate existing. Having 50 weak noble families like this instead of 10-20 strong families means you don't have any challenge competing for the big seat. It also makes the entire family attribute system for powerful houses kind of awkward and out of place.
Solution:
Since there is no in-game mechanics to clean imperial family pool from time to time, at least present us with option to but out AI estate for the price of all their upgrades or something like this. Obviously this should not spread over top 5 houses, they would blatantly refuse this with -1000 acceptation modifier.
4. Estates
Problem:
Estates are programmed as if they're located in some ethereal space where entire building can be freely moved to a different part of the world.
For some reason when you grant an appointment to character their estate will always spawn in capital instead of location where they're appointed
Solution:
When characters gets an estate, there should be an pop-up window that asks him where he wants to locate his estate. Capital duchy should be an expensive and safe option, but having an estate in his appointed land should greatly benefit his family elections here at the cost of actually losing an estate along with territory if being invaded. Now this decision to make estates ethereal seems more like a design thing with paradox caving to arcade player base.
5. AI is not aggressive enough with elections.
Problem:
I've seen this numerous times when an AI character is sitting here with 8000 influence not doing anything with it. In CK2's republics AI would fight you to the nail over the big seat, in CK3 AI is very lenient. Now I don't know, maybe its investing capacity issue on AI behalf, but then why do they not invest in family members when reach capacity for their own elections?
Solution:
As I understand AI act randomly based on their attribute stats like boldness, energy, rationality, etc. So it's simply seems to be a logic tuning issue, where AI willingness to invest should be higher overall.
6. Administrative realms don't split.
Problem:
Now, I don't know whether this is just a bug I encountered or regular thing among players. I've played admin realm and held both Rus and Byz titles (roughly within their de-jure borders) that were inherited to different characters upon death. But instead of splitting realm in half, almost all land and governors were inherited along with primary title and the second guy got only an empire title without his de-jure vassals.
Solution:
Seems like an oversight, please fix admin inheritance.
P.S.
Since we have All Under Heaven underway, an update that adds a ton of characters and admin-based realms, implementing at least some of these suggestions is kind of relevant to make future gameplay smoother.
1. Inflated amount of nobility.
Problem:
If you played as admin realm you know that after a couple of generations amount of noble families skyrocket because every time you grant Duchy it automatically creates a noble family. Byzantines start with about 10 families, after 100 years those are 30, at least, without any expansion even. Obviously most of them don't govern anything and basically *just exist* here. Now, some say that's one of the causes for late game lag, I don't know about that but at the very least this situation is immersion breaking because you can't divide your attention between so many houses, which causes the player to abstract and lose interest.
Solution:
First, hard cap on amount of noble families based on realm size. Something like realm size divided by 10, but no higher than 30. If you realm loses lands and current amount of families are higher than the cap, then you simply can't create new estates. Albeit not realistic, this is the simplest mechanical way of doing it.
Second, governorship should be granted without family estate by default. This instantly solves exponential nobility growth. Not every governor was a part of hereditary capital nobility because they got the title. You as a ruler want to elevate talented peasant boy and establish new noble family out of him? Well, grant him and appointment AND give money for building a family estate. Alternatively, he can build an estate on his own by paying money earned through service if nobility cap (see above) is not yet reached. Mechanically owning an estate in CK3 is for inheriting progress to the next character, but AI player doesn't need this in every case.
2. No domestic power balance.
Problem:
For some reason, imperial nobility does not care if you grant appointments to random lowborn characters or exclusively your own family. Now this is probably the most baffling on the list because it's goes against common sense. To be honest I don't even think there's need to explain this. Are you seriously telling me that a patriarch of ancient family will just watch me giving out land to random peasants? How many civil wars happened in Byzantium over less than this?
Solution:
In upcoming AUH update there's a new mechanic of house relationship. I suggest implementing this here. Every time appointment is handed to a character the game should check noble families on the matter of possible candidates, if the family has one (e. g. Adult, capable, male, etc.) then NOT giving land to him will decrease relations between ruler and vassal houses by some amount. Instead, giving lands to possible candidates improves relationship. Obviously you will blueball nobility more often than granting land, therefore negative and positive should be something like -20 and +60 to not break the game. And I mean I understand PDX fear of scaring off arcade player base just like with conclave, then make this maluses and bonuses microscopic like -2 and +6, but to not have this entirely is kinda crazy. This is simple mechanic that can increase immersion by a ton.
3. No in-game way to get rid of abundant families
Problem:
Basically what described above combines, families don't just die out, there is always a random child, a random woman that can't inherit anything but keep estate existing. Having 50 weak noble families like this instead of 10-20 strong families means you don't have any challenge competing for the big seat. It also makes the entire family attribute system for powerful houses kind of awkward and out of place.
Solution:
Since there is no in-game mechanics to clean imperial family pool from time to time, at least present us with option to but out AI estate for the price of all their upgrades or something like this. Obviously this should not spread over top 5 houses, they would blatantly refuse this with -1000 acceptation modifier.
4. Estates
Problem:
Estates are programmed as if they're located in some ethereal space where entire building can be freely moved to a different part of the world.
For some reason when you grant an appointment to character their estate will always spawn in capital instead of location where they're appointed
Solution:
When characters gets an estate, there should be an pop-up window that asks him where he wants to locate his estate. Capital duchy should be an expensive and safe option, but having an estate in his appointed land should greatly benefit his family elections here at the cost of actually losing an estate along with territory if being invaded. Now this decision to make estates ethereal seems more like a design thing with paradox caving to arcade player base.
5. AI is not aggressive enough with elections.
Problem:
I've seen this numerous times when an AI character is sitting here with 8000 influence not doing anything with it. In CK2's republics AI would fight you to the nail over the big seat, in CK3 AI is very lenient. Now I don't know, maybe its investing capacity issue on AI behalf, but then why do they not invest in family members when reach capacity for their own elections?
Solution:
As I understand AI act randomly based on their attribute stats like boldness, energy, rationality, etc. So it's simply seems to be a logic tuning issue, where AI willingness to invest should be higher overall.
6. Administrative realms don't split.
Problem:
Now, I don't know whether this is just a bug I encountered or regular thing among players. I've played admin realm and held both Rus and Byz titles (roughly within their de-jure borders) that were inherited to different characters upon death. But instead of splitting realm in half, almost all land and governors were inherited along with primary title and the second guy got only an empire title without his de-jure vassals.
Solution:
Seems like an oversight, please fix admin inheritance.
P.S.
Since we have All Under Heaven underway, an update that adds a ton of characters and admin-based realms, implementing at least some of these suggestions is kind of relevant to make future gameplay smoother.
Last edited:
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