The gameplay focus on stacking stats and modifiers runs counter to the core design philosophy of Crusader Kings 3

[ray243]

This is a big elephant in the room that I don't think the devs or a lot of players are really talking about. Right now, CK3 is caught between trying to be two different types of strategy games at once, but one aspect of its game design is all about stacking stats and modifiers that is not intuitive to what makes a game like CK3 fun.

Late game is really not that fun or challenging because the late game is one where the player nearly always had ridiculous amount of stats and modifiers to make their lives easier and easier. To put it simply, there's no real "end" in sight. The late game is nearly always a genetic super dynasty in charge of a super empire with ridiculous modifiers, stats and legacies. The more you play, the easier the game gets in your campaign.

This isn't really immersive, nor is it really fun unless you are playing CK3 purely for a power fantasy. It takes the storytelling crafting element away from CK3.

My wish is future CK titles, if not a CK3 rework, at least for CK4 is to make the game be less about modifier stacking.

Because making CK3 a game of modifier stacking is essentially this:

I would rather have CK3 lean more into being a management strategy game where the game forces you to manage a wide variety of characters in the game with more management tools and functions than just making you stack stats so every vassal and courtiers ends up with +100 opinion of you by the end of the game.

 

[Whizzer]

It's been this way since launch, and it's only gotten worse. CK3 is simply not a spiritual successor to CK2, even if CK2 had a bit of the same problem throughout its lifespan.

 

[ray243]

It's been this way since launch, and it's only gotten worse. CK3 is simply not a spiritual successor to CK2, even if CK2 had a bit of the same problem throughout its lifespan.

CK3 gave players more stuff to do in peacetime. But that ends up being focused on given players more modifiers and stats to build up in other ways.

 

[WeeLittleSpoon]

I think more decay and chaos is a partial solution. Buildings could decay like artifacts, legacies could last only a generation or two and then pass, genetic traits could be more random, modifiers could last a year or two on average instead of five or ten. I think a world about the medieval ages that is always trending back towards the status quo would be interesting. It's not usually fun to have to start from square one with every new character, but everything feels so permanent right now. Having things naturally decay every couple generations unless held together by extremely competent characters could be interesting.

I suggested a not-very-good ambition idea a while ago including the aforementioned idea about decaying legacies, so I don't think that's likely to happen, but I did perk up when they mentioned the ebb and flow of order and chaos with Chapter 5's dynastic cycles. I am intrigued by what they'll do with that.

 

[ray243]

I think more decay and chaos is a partial solution. Buildings could decay like artifacts, legacies could last only a generation or two and then pass, genetic traits could be more random, modifiers could last a year or two on average instead of five or ten. I think a world about the medieval ages that is always trending back towards the status quo would be interesting. It's not usually fun to have to start from square one with every new character, but everything feels so permanent right now. Having things naturally decay every couple generations unless held together by extremely competent characters could be interesting.

I suggested a not-very-good ambition idea a while ago including the aforementioned idea about decaying legacies, so I don't think that's likely to happen, but I did perk up when they mentioned the ebb and flow of order and chaos with Chapter 5's dynastic cycles. I am intrigued by what they'll do with that.

Decay and upkeep cost can be integrated. Maintaining a monumental empire is expensive, and often you have to invest heavily with your gold into infrastructure to maintain prestige.

 

[Whizzer]

CK3 gave players more stuff to do in peacetime. But that ends up being focused on given players more modifiers and stats to build up in other ways.

I don't disagree, especially with DLC like Tours and Tournaments. Unfortunately, none of that content reinforces the strategic element of the game, nor does it add actual new mechanics, which makes it a moot point, at least for me. If I wanted to play a power fantasy game, I would have launched Doom.

 

[Zopyrionis]

I once made a post about special game rules that can solve this problem. In short:

Modifiers stacking limit:
1) Default (nothing changes).
2) Enabled, with exception for temporal modifiers. For example, you can get only 30 prowess from lifestyle perks and artifacts, but you can get more with temporal modifiers.
3) Enabled. Even if you have artifacts for 100 prowess, you will never get more than 30.
4) Enabled, with exception for temporal modifiers (Player only).
5) Enabled (Player only).

There was another suggestion posted in that thread:

An alternate solution is to have a stacking penalty applied to modifiers, so that the best modifier gets applied at 100%, while the next best modifier might only get applied at 66 or 75% of its value, and so on. That way getting a higher modifier than one already owned is still beneficial, but stacking modifiers past 2-3 of them provides almost no benefit at all for the additional ones. It also means the development staff can more readily control the minimum and maximum stats by the size of the largest modifier value they allow without having to worry about the size of the pool of available modifiers.

And I also have suggestion about artifact modifiers.

I would rather have CK3 lean more into being a management strategy game where the game forces you to manage a wide variety of characters in the game with more management tools and functions than just making you stack stats so every vassal and courtiers ends up with +100 opinion of you by the end of the game.

I had an idea about how this could be implemented even if we get rid of modifiers invasion, but I am not sure it’s possible to implement it mechanically. What if NPC opinion about us would form not as a simple sum of numbers, but as but as a sum of several different parameters that technically present in a game in some form. NPC could have an opinion about our personality, our faith devotion, our honor, strength, prestige, beauty, et cetera and make decisions in individual cases based on these parameters.

Let assume that some duke like my character traits, he even my friend and then I start a war against another duke who is known as a devout Christian. I am overwise, a sinner and despite my friend-duke like some aspects of my personality, he would not help me in this war. Another example is loyalty and honor. If your character is famous for his loyalty and honor like El Cid, then even rulers of foreign faith and the one who dislikes your personality may help you in some cases. It’s still a plus or minus opinion system, but it will be spited in categories and NPC will think about their actions towards you differently depending on the occasion. But I don’t know if that is possible to implement actually. All famous RGP’s or Immersive Sims with multiple choices have them through pre-written scripts. Maybe AI just couldn’t handle this system in sandbox model.

 

[ArynI]

Completely agree. While in the few games I had I always stopped before becoming truly OP I think its clear from very beggining that player heirs are much more qualified compared to the AI ones. While limiting modifiers is definitelly way I support, maybe it would be less of issue if AI could actually learn better how to play and gain such modifiers (i.e. not always choose personality option or gain traits on higher rate that how it work for players).
Its nice that devs have vision of increasing difficulty in meaningfull ways instead of just adding bonuses to AI, but we are in 4th year of the game (if I am not mistaken?) and almost nothing of significance was done - so maybe simpler solution is better than no solution...

 

[ray243]

Completely agree. While in the few games I had I always stopped before becoming truly OP I think its clear from very beggining that player heirs are much more qualified compared to the AI ones. While limiting modifiers is definitelly way I support, maybe it would be less of issue if AI could actually learn better how to play and gain such modifiers (i.e. not always choose personality option or gain traits on higher rate that how it work for players).
Its nice that devs have vision of increasing difficulty in meaningfull ways instead of just adding bonuses to AI, but we are in 4th year of the game (if I am not mistaken?) and almost nothing of significance was done - so maybe simpler solution is better than no solution...

It's why I feel even if AI does get better at the problem. It's the problem of even making this a game of who can stack modifiers better which to me isn't fun and removes the immersion of the setting.

When a group of 10 knights beat up and army of 2000 soldiers I feel this is where it becomes more fantasy than reality.

 

[ray243]

I once made a post about special game rules that can solve this problem. In short:

Modifiers stacking limit:
1) Default (nothing changes).
2) Enabled, with exception for temporal modifiers. For example, you can get only 30 prowess from lifestyle perks and artifacts, but you can get more with temporal modifiers.
3) Enabled. Even if you have artifacts for 100 prowess, you will never get more than 30.
4) Enabled, with exception for temporal modifiers (Player only).
5) Enabled (Player only).

There was another suggestion posted in that thread:

And I also have suggestion about artifact modifiers.

I had an idea about how this could be implemented even if we get rid of modifiers invasion, but I am not sure it’s possible to implement it mechanically. What if NPC opinion about us would form not as a simple sum of numbers, but as but as a sum of several different parameters that technically present in a game in some form. NPC could have an opinion about our personality, our faith devotion, our honor, strength, prestige, beauty, et cetera and make decisions in individual cases based on these parameters.

Let assume that some duke like my character traits, he even my friend and then I start a war against another duke who is known as a devout Christian. I am overwise, a sinner and despite my friend-duke like some aspects of my personality, he would not help me in this war. Another example is loyalty and honor. If your character is famous for his loyalty and honor like El Cid, then even rulers of foreign faith and the one who dislikes your personality may help you in some cases. It’s still a plus or minus opinion system, but it will be spited in categories and NPC will think about their actions towards you differently depending on the occasion. But I don’t know if that is possible to implement actually. All famous RGP’s or Immersive Sims with multiple choices have them through pre-written scripts. Maybe AI just couldn’t handle this system in sandbox model.

3KTW developed something like you suggested showing it can work for a strategy game. They called it the guanxi system.

Guanxi

Guanxi System (Friendship and Loyalty) is a game-play mechanic in Total War: Three Kingdoms. The system is modeled after guanxi (關係/关系), the Chinese concept of dynamic inter-relationships. The Creative Assembly team states that the game has taken a paradigm-shifting approach to character agency...

totalwar.fandom.com

 

[47pik]

I agree - this is a game about characters and all mechanics should be centered around them, they should always be the focus. Every system and mechanic should be tying back to characters. The challenge should come from characters. The goals should come from characters.

 

[DeanTheDull]

...is OP going to specify what they think the CK3 core design philosophy is?

 

[TripleAgent]

...is OP going to specify what they think the CK3 core design philosophy is?

Not OP, I think the one on the game page/marketing is probably the most objective metric:

"Real Strategy Requires Cunning"

A game about modifier stacks and genetic breeding doesn't require cunning, it requires busywork.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Not OP, I think the one on the game page/marketing is probably the most objective metric:

"Real Strategy Requires Cunning"

A game about modifier stacks and genetic breeding doesn't require cunning, it requires busywork.

Call me old-fashioned, but I tend not to believe that marketing taglines are the underlying design philosophies.

Marketing, after all, tends to start in earnest after a product design has already formed, in order to know what to advertise. And that design is a product is generally a result of the ideas and compromises consistent with the design philosophy.

 

[ProfHardknocks]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the modifier stacking in MOST cases is worthless and meaningless because the game will care up to what, Modifier +20, +30 for most things, then doesn't care any more? So it doesn't matter if you have 30 Prowess or 300 Prowess. It doesn't matter if the world has +80 opinion of you or +1200 opinion of you. The higher number yields no benefit. So what's the point then? Probably hoping that lower minded people will oogle the big numbers and feel good. They're selling the sizzle, not the steak.

As for people who talk about realism, go walk outside for your realism. It's right there.

 

[Citizen Caen]

Perhaps one idea to permanently nip modifier stacking is to provide a maximum cap on how high a stat can be increased from its base level.

To illustrate: something like a characters martial skill can only increase 20% via lifestyle perks and equipment from the base skill+traits. So a brave, tough soldier character with a base skill of 10. Would have (10+4+2)=16. so a 20% cap would mean at most the character could increase 3 in martial from perks equipment or 19 martial skill.

That seems like a fair way to do it. You can’t stack infinity but you can somewhat grow and improve overtime

 

[Citizen Caen]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the modifier stacking in MOST cases is worthless and meaningless because the game will care up to what, Modifier +20, +30 for most things, then doesn't care any more? So it doesn't matter if you have 30 Prowess or 300 Prowess. It doesn't matter if the world has +80 opinion of you or +1200 opinion of you. The higher number yields no benefit. So what's the point then? Probably hoping that lower minded people will oogle the big numbers and feel good. They're selling the sizzle, not the steak.

As for people who talk about realism, go walk outside for your realism. It's right there.

Whether it’s +80 or +1200 actually does matter. If it’s only +80, the guy who’s hated me at -100 will never like me. At most I can get him to -20. At +1200 I can overcome literally every negative. I could have killed that guys entire family and he’ll still be at +100.

The issue is that it overcomes negatives not that the number is big. Not good for gameplay

 

[InsidiousMage]

Whether it’s +80 or +1200 actually does matter. If it’s only +80, the guy who’s hated me at -100 will never like me. At most I can get him to -20. At +1200 I can overcome literally every negative. I could have killed that guys entire family and he’ll still be at +100.

Sadly, I've had worse when I castrated a dude, took his titles, and killed his brothers but he still had like +10 opinion of me because of all of the modifier stacking.

 

[Delterius]

The issue is that it overcomes negatives not that the number is big. Not good for gameplay

I think this is the crux of the issue. Health modifiers offer a template here: some things are good for injuries, others for disease and others are generic bonuses. What if 'killed my dad' just outright suspended positive opinion modifiers? 5 levels of devotion and owning the holy thumb of saint peter shouldn't matter in the face of rampant anarcho-castrationism.

 

[Citizen Caen]

View attachment 1279900

Sadly, I've had worse when I castrated a dude, took his titles, and killed his brothers but he still had like +10 opinion of me because of all of the modifier stacking.

Lol
“He may have cut off my manhood, stole my land, and killed my brothers; But he’s so Open-Minded I just can’t help but like him”
-King Tello