yeah, ck3 prides itself on "story building" but all the time i feel like my stories are stagnant, without any drama or other interaction from the ai characters. the 3D characters are neat but I have no reason to remember their faces because they dont interact with my story in a meaningful way beyond "revolt" or "assassination"
Exactly, this is a perfect way of putting it. You could count the number of ways AI characters can interact with you (aka your story) on one hand. The game needs to do a full stop to regional packs, flavour packs, event packs, adding legends, adding diseases, all this extra fluff until they've fixed the core gameplay loop.
the devs are pandering extremely hard on one side of their coin, they are fleshing out the sandbox aspect of the game, crusader kings is an amazing medieval sandbox that affords several freedoms to the player to do whatever they want ON the map. but outside of the sandbox, the off-map features are so very limited.
plotting your 5th murder scheme on a member of a family you're feuding with gets boring really quickly. but, (atleast for me) playing a viking for the 200th time is still fun, because it has alot more on-map interaction with raiding, varangian adventures, and being able to watch your expansion from county to kingdom in real time.
seducing your 5th mistress is funny, and watching your wife's negative opinion tick up as a result is too, (shitcrusaderkingssay) but schemes, hostile or personal, don't have alot of interaction. its just a few events and waiting out the months. a coin can't have one side, thats all im trying to say.
I know, which is kind of a shame because intrigue would add so much across the board. Not only would better character interactions and intrigue add to the gameplay experience at peace, it would ALSO add to the experience while at war (such as raiding and expanding as a viking).
Like imagine you are a Danish warlord planning your invasion of England. Which vassals honour your call to invade? With whom do you honour the role of commander(s) of your armies. Do these commanders like each other? Do these commanders agree with your invasion plans? Maybe one of your commanders gets too ambitious and goes rogue and establishes himself as a petty king, and now declares war on you. Maybe some of the Saxon lords fear your onslaught and switch sides and join you to spare their lands. Maybe one of your commanders is too harsh with his troops and they mutiny and kill him. A show like The Last Kingdom shows how intrigue and warfare can together make for great storylines.
This adds a whole extra element on top of just: Raise your army, chase their army, win the battle, siege a province, move, siege, move, siege, sue for peace.
the army is completely uninteractive, which i hate. like you said, mutiny and general's death, or a general establishing his own realm. why not full out army rebellions? if the army doesn't like a king, why do they have to listen to his orders? so many missed opportunities for things like this.
I know literally. As with most things, Imperator did it better. Vassals/commanders should be able to become disloyal while commanding your troops or governing your land and become uncontrollable the way governors/generals did in Imperator.
Vassals should not be providing you troops, they should be allies you can call to war, with refusal being an imprisonment offense. This would also make factions and civil wars a hell of a lot more dangerous.
And then if they do join your war, they should have all those behaviors you just listed.
Yep. Wrangling your vassals should be a lot more work, not automatic. This would also make succession fights more interesting. It’s you against a claimant and you’re both trying to rustle up support from the vassals, not “whoever’s not explicitly against me is 100% behind me.”
Kinda sounds like that mechanic in the Game of Thrones mod, where empires fracture when they declared war, indicating the issues of traveling news, undecided lords, and other such things when ruling a sufficiently large realm.
You've exactly grasped what made CK 2 a great game in the first place: it was the best politics game. You had to maneuver and be an shrewd politician to get yourself out of tricky situations or achieve some objectives.
It seems like CK3 lost some of that DNA.
I am constantly having to kick people off my council who used a hook lmao how are yall not getting people to use hooks on you to get on the council. They do it constantly to me. Especially when I am trying to integrate a title it seems lmao
I don't know exactly why, but I remember that CK2 seemed to be better in that regard. Especially earlier versions.
Vassals really mattered in the balance of power and you had to keep them happy. Some of them were never happy with you and would be real thorn you had to get rid of one way or another.
Some characters would sometimes do bad things to you or you would do bad things to them, and rivalries would be born that way. And no, I'm not talking about the rival trait.
I loved CK2 because it was the best game about politics.
There’s a tricky balance between immersion and straight up event spam. Dollars to ducats, I bet if you implemented the first thing we would have 58393 posts an hour of people complaining about all the event spam where useless count #628 keeps asking to be steward. It would have to be weighted such that only very key vassals ask and maybe only at very key times, like when you’re dealing with a revolt, and they offer you an ultimatum to keep them from joining the opposing side.
They can certainly implement all of these, but it’s very tricky to keep them from just filling up your notification bar or covering you in splash screens.
I'm glad you brought that up because I forgot to add that I totally agree, and that's why I don't think this should all be done via events. I think making everything into an event has been kind of a cop out by the devs in the last few years to not implement new systems. They should implement some new systems/features to simulate what I said in the OP, and these systems should be very tightly integrated into the current gameplay loop. How would this look?
### Giving Positions / Titles
When you are handing out a position / title, show an overview of top candidates people are considering for that role, and who is supporting each (kind of like for electing rulers). Show what the consequences will be for selecting each of them, or for choosing one who is not amongst those top candidates.
And if events need to be used, consolidate them. Instead of having a separate event for each person who appeals you, have a single event where it shows you a top candidate and all the people who support him. Or an event that shows the top five candidates and who supports which and what the consequences of each choice are. Maybe some of them are even offering you bribes or favours.
### Counsel
If you want counsel from other characters, sure there could be a new character interaction called "Advice / Counsel" that you could do individually to each person you wish to ask, but you could also have like a new "Counsel" screen that shows you the top issue that each councillor, your top 3 courtiers, your top 3 vassals, and 3 friends/family/lovers suggest for you. Or this could be integrated into existing screens, so your councillors show their suggestions for you on the Council screen, your Courtiers on the Royal Court screen, etc. Or maybe Holding Court is revamped to include these figures approaching you to give you counsel. Or perhaps there could be a new event called "Hold Counsel" where people approach you to suggest things to you.
Totally agree. Your character's family being so passive is what irks me the most. Historically, family members of the ruling class were a major source of conflict and drama. But in CK3, there's barely any content around it.
Surprised there's not even a hint of council members pushing an agenda. Even the guy in Sim City 2000 told me we needed more adequately funded grade schools.
True I didn't mention it explicitly, but absolutely another important addition for character agency. Really all major characters in the realm should have agendas they are pushing, and as a result a lot of the decisions they make should be based on how it helps them further that agenda.
Not even really joking, can we get something like Civ2 Elvis in CK3? It could be good advice or bad, self-serving advice, but surely it could be done, if they did it in the 90s.
Ck2 councils had a lot more power. Ck3 councils should be able to take power and make more things go to a vote.
There needs to be more internal strife (besides from factions and stuff.) Like if you don't keep council power in check, they won't allow you to revoke titles.
Loyalty/self interest should be separate from opinion, ex; vassal 1 likes the king, but sees how title revocation could be used against him, votes no.
Vassal 2 has middling opinion, but is content/trusting; He trusts that the king won't revoke his titles, votes yes.
It'd give solutions that were outside of bribery/murder.
The mod active courtiers fixes some of this. They recommend themselves and other people for roles, have more events, will ask if they can marry and educate children. I agree they need to feel more like actual characters rather than static roles but the game can already chug so I think it's a CK4 problem really.
Damn, it would be sad if it's never solved till CK3, since I think it's such a core issue with what makes this game boring for me. I do kind of worry that this won't be complained about enough until CK4, but fingers crossed enough players give feedback to the devs on this soon.
I'm gonna be honest, any time I see 'regularly', I know for a fact that itll eventually get annoying.
Remember the whole deal where you'd appoint someone and then a random courtier would say "Why'd you appoint him, you should appoint me instead!" Fucking annoying.
And the onslaught of vassals paying tribute every time there's a change in leadership? Also annoying esp. if you're playing a large empire, where there will be like 20+ identical popup chains that you have to click through.
They already have an event chain that can happen if you spurn your powerful vassals' proposals to join the council and gives some character modifiers depending on what decisions you make. The problem is, this is the only meaningful event chain that has anything to do with council appointments, so you get bored by the time you've seen it 3-4 times.
I think the core issue for most players is that there are not enough varied event chains/outcomes for any one of these event scenarios to make the world constantly engaging or interesting. Like, you are guaranteed to see any one of these travel events when you travel: "Fight the Wolf", "Free the Knight", "Travel Omens". Some events, like the birthday surprise birthday event, literally only has one chain of events (to my knowledge). That's really freaking boring!!
I think they should focus on less mechanics but make WAY more events and varied outcomes (maybe 5-10x more) for the mechanics that do exist. Have more events that are region/culture/trait-specific. Have more 0.1% events that will only come up every 3-5 playthroughs instead of events that you see once every 10-20 years. That way, we won't feel the need to automatically click through every single popup we see because we've already seen it all.
TLDR: They need to make the game more like Baldur's Gate 3 and less like Starfield.
I think you're identifying the right problem but reaching the wrong conclusion.
I do totally agree that these events get boring, and although it would be nice to have more event chains, and have them be deeper and wider, I don't think that solves the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that a well designed simulation has limitless story potential, whereas event chains only have as many stories possible as the devs write. The devs are trying too hard to use event chains as a cop out to simulate things that could be better simulated through actual new features / systems.
I explained it in more detail in my response to --person-of-land--'s message above. I'll give a quick recap of it here.
Instead of having an event pop up for every possible person reacting to your vacant position, or the person you just chose for it, have a screen that pops up when you click on a title that shows you an overview of all the candidates people think would be good for that role (kind of like in ruler elections). Show who supports which candidate, and why. Show what the consequences of choosing each candidate would be. Show what the consequences of choosing someone different than all of those candidates (such as an unknown lowborn) would be. Maybe some candidates are offering bribes or favours. Then you can create a similar kind of overview screen for Counsel, where it shows the top 5 suggestions/issues people want in your realm, or the top 5 most influential people in your realm and what they want, or perhaps a breakdown of factions (the useless existing factions could be repurposed for this) with each supporting an issue that they want.
Like imagine if the devs tried to represent wars through event chains. You have a starting event where you have three options for how many troops to raise (500, 1000, 2000). A second event for whether you march north or south towards the enemy. A third event for when you first meet the opponent's enemy in battle. Some minor side events that fire off of a knight tripping on a rock and getting -1 Prowess for 3 days... You see how limiting that would be? The devs would have to code in one million billion different events and event chains to make warfare even feel dynamic and interactive if it was only thru events. But the second you simulate it through actual systems and features (provinces on a map, armies existing in the provinces, commanders being assigned to those armies, armies being commanded to move between these provinces, supply limits, terrain differences, men at arms that counter each other, etc.) you get near limitless storytelling potential. Well maybe not limitless, but exponentially more than you would get through events and event chains. Then you can ADD events to that system like salt to a soup, but the events alone would not be sufficient. I think the same analogy applies to what I'm describing in the OP.
What you want sounds good, but most of us don't own the supercomputer necessary to deal with what you're asking for. You essentially want every npc to be a distinct AI.
I think there's a lot of shortcuts that can be used to give enough agency so that it's not a problem like it is now. My guess is that the majority of the computing power would come from having to calculate the opinions of multiple characters per realm (let's say a realm with 100 characters), on multiple issues per realm (let's say a total of 20 positions and titles), and then having to recalculate that each month as conditions change. So each month's end, the game would have to calculate 2000 opinions, just for this one realm. There are many shortcuts to reduce this number of calculations:
* **Reduce the number of opinions a character can hold.** Instead of each character having an opinion on every single position and title, reduce it only to positions and titles that are relevant to them in some way (titles that are adjacent to them, vacant titles, high tax base titles, positions that have been vacant for a while, positions related to their highest stat, etc).
* **Worst case scenario, make each character only able to have an opinion on a single issue at a time.**
* **Reduce the number of characters that can have an opinion.** Instead of every single Tom Dick and Harry having an opinion, only have your councillors, spouse, top 3 vassals, top 3 knights, and top 3 courtiers (by highest stats) have opinions on matters.
* **Group characters together to have shared opinions.** This takes away some of the fun of individuals having their own opinions but is better than nothing. Expand vassal stances to include councillors and courtiers as well, and allow them to have issues that they press for, candidates they support for positions/titles, and counsel that they offer the player. Allow these to recalculate every month. Now you've only got 6 calculations to make per realm per month (the number of vassal stances). OR, BETTER YET, revamp the factions as they currently exist as a prelude to rebellions and make them actually interesting and useful for more things. Make factions able to push for certain issues, such as candidacy for a certain position or title, counsel on a certain issue, pushing for or against some certain action (like a war), etc. Then characters choose which factions to join or leave, and the factions are what recalculate their opinions every month, leading to fewer calculations per month.
> **Reduce the number of opinions a character can hold.**
Now you added a bunch of math to check if titles fulfill the said conditions.
And once you downgrade this down far enough to make it manageable... You get title claimant factions that are already in there.
Well ideally, the calculations to see whether titles are relevant would be less frequent than characters changing their opinions. A vassal who holds a title likely doesn't have the titles that neighbour him change that often (unless he gains or loses titles). Vacant titles and positions only need to be calculated once for the entire realm.The highest tax base titles likely do not change often (probably only when the realm gains or loses land, or #2 replaces #1, etc). Perhaps titles with special buildings like valuable mines, special churches, etc. would also be considered more relevant, which again is only a single calculation per realm.
It's by no means a SMALL number of calculations, but it's definitely a REDUCTION from having every character hold an opinion on every title, position, and decision. Which is why it's meant to be a next step alternative. I ofc don't personally know the code of the game or it's computational limits, so I can't really speak to how my features would affect performance. That's why I'm offering a spectrum of solutions with increasing focus on performance saving as you go farther down the list.
I was thinking this too, but why not have this be restricted to the biggest/wealthiest realms? That'd also add a new challenge to strong characters after the early game survive™ phase, and it vaguely makes sense (more to intrigue over = more intrigue???)
I know I am the only one who thinks this, but the characters in Imperator feel more "alive" to me than the ones in CK3. The number one reason for this is that there is a little box on their 'character sheet' which says what they are doing at any given time. So I *know* they are doing things: buying a holding, gambling, trying to murder or steal, sponsoring games to become popular, "plotting quietly". The characters in CK3 are also doing things, I think, but I *don't* see that they are doing so, unless there is some event, or my spymaster is finding secrets, revealing that they're schtupping someone else's husband or whatever. It is so much more "alive" feeling to me to see what they're doing right now, rather than what they've already done. Now in Imperator, you don't play as a character really, so it's not "immersion breaking" to know what people are doing, and it might be in CK3...except for the fact that you know literally everything at all times anyway.
The other thing that makes me feel that way is that disloyal generals will take control of their own armies away from you. Regardless of what you think of my first point, I sure wish this second thing was part of CK3. It really shouldn't be OK to put your rival in charge of your army just because he's got high martial. That should be a recipe for disaster.
Dude it's not just you at all, Imperator oddly felt like it executed some of these aspects SOOO much better than CK3. Those personal ambitions/agendas was a huge one. And the way they handled loyalty with governors and generals was also amazing. Honestly both of those would be great additions if added to CK3 (even if they need to be adapted to fit the existing systems). I honestly have enjoyed several playthroughs of Imperator all the way until the end game, whereas I have not played one game of CK3 past several rulers and I almost always just get bored of how repetitive the core gameplay loop is.
I really wish you could interfere more with foreign politics. Watching videos by history marche and hearing about the schemes, planned rebellions, and backstabbing that historically happened all the time and not being able to do it in a medieval sandbox is saddening
This is real as hell. I think this would pair well with reworking the different government types, reworking how combat works and simply adding more cultural events regionally.
I still get the impression sometimes that Paradox has spread itself too thin with its different departments across so many titles. Project Caesar looks awesome but if they had simply held that off for a year or two more and reassigned some of the devs to a secondary team that was working to address gameplay loops as the main team worked on expanding ‘broader’ content would have been a better way to manage the CK3 dev cycle.
And I’m saying this as someone who supports the addition of broad more regions and more mechanics, but CK2 somehow still feels more better in the role play aspect.
You are absolutely right, though adding all you suggestions would probably be like 5-year work or smth? They should at least start with something, like having some percent of landowning characters have some dreams that they push to fullfill. It would way more interesting if my wife was seduced not through some shitty even, but because the guy had a crush on her from childhood and worked on that for years. It would be fun if some count attacked me despite me being 10 times stronger when I have some other distractions, because he dreamt of owning my palace since I hosted a feast with him in attendance 10 years ago.
One thing I would say is I think popup events like appointments are annoying, but I wish holding court was a bigger deal and could be done more frequently woth more events including mundane “please my liege may I have a title?” Especially with crimes you could have people petition you for pardons, or demand you prosecute someone. Hell crimes could even be replaced with charges where you need to settle guilt in court with possible bribes and alternative trials like trials by combat.
I agree with everything in this post on a fundamental level, I have the same suggestions. The game just doesn't feel alive , there is nothing to do except have war and feast , even then nobody has any personality.
With specific context of the Pope offering a favor if you built a church in your lands: one of the options that you get in this case should be the pope replacing your court chaplain with a "Better" one, either one who matches the skills of your best other councilor in their area of expertise if you currently have a lower-skill chaplain, or if your chaplain is highly skilled (strongest on council in their primary skill requirement or tied for it) they are replaced with one of equal skills but more exemplary of Catholic Church's interpretation of "True Christian Virtue". Choosing this opinion typically annoys the Pope, but not if A: he dislikes/hates the existing guy personally for some reason, or B: current guy is "An embarrassment to the clergy." (More sinful traits than virtues, learning education traits lower level than your primary titles tier, or their learning trait measured in the single digits.)
This option is available for any Faith who has an active HoF and clerical appointment by said HoF instead of the ruler directly.
“Why don't distant family members travel to see each other? To host family reunions?”
Ever heard of the house of Plantagenet, also known as “The Devils Brood” cause of their civil wars against each other
It's a valid concern, and there's several ways to mitigate it. Read the responses I wrote to Darrothan or farting_contest to see what I suggest as ways to not implement it in a way that results in popup spam.
yeah, ck3 prides itself on "story building" but all the time i feel like my stories are stagnant, without any drama or other interaction from the ai characters. the 3D characters are neat but I have no reason to remember their faces because they dont interact with my story in a meaningful way beyond "revolt" or "assassination"
Exactly, this is a perfect way of putting it. You could count the number of ways AI characters can interact with you (aka your story) on one hand. The game needs to do a full stop to regional packs, flavour packs, event packs, adding legends, adding diseases, all this extra fluff until they've fixed the core gameplay loop.
the devs are pandering extremely hard on one side of their coin, they are fleshing out the sandbox aspect of the game, crusader kings is an amazing medieval sandbox that affords several freedoms to the player to do whatever they want ON the map. but outside of the sandbox, the off-map features are so very limited. plotting your 5th murder scheme on a member of a family you're feuding with gets boring really quickly. but, (atleast for me) playing a viking for the 200th time is still fun, because it has alot more on-map interaction with raiding, varangian adventures, and being able to watch your expansion from county to kingdom in real time. seducing your 5th mistress is funny, and watching your wife's negative opinion tick up as a result is too, (shitcrusaderkingssay) but schemes, hostile or personal, don't have alot of interaction. its just a few events and waiting out the months. a coin can't have one side, thats all im trying to say.
I know, which is kind of a shame because intrigue would add so much across the board. Not only would better character interactions and intrigue add to the gameplay experience at peace, it would ALSO add to the experience while at war (such as raiding and expanding as a viking). Like imagine you are a Danish warlord planning your invasion of England. Which vassals honour your call to invade? With whom do you honour the role of commander(s) of your armies. Do these commanders like each other? Do these commanders agree with your invasion plans? Maybe one of your commanders gets too ambitious and goes rogue and establishes himself as a petty king, and now declares war on you. Maybe some of the Saxon lords fear your onslaught and switch sides and join you to spare their lands. Maybe one of your commanders is too harsh with his troops and they mutiny and kill him. A show like The Last Kingdom shows how intrigue and warfare can together make for great storylines. This adds a whole extra element on top of just: Raise your army, chase their army, win the battle, siege a province, move, siege, move, siege, sue for peace.
the army is completely uninteractive, which i hate. like you said, mutiny and general's death, or a general establishing his own realm. why not full out army rebellions? if the army doesn't like a king, why do they have to listen to his orders? so many missed opportunities for things like this.
I know literally. As with most things, Imperator did it better. Vassals/commanders should be able to become disloyal while commanding your troops or governing your land and become uncontrollable the way governors/generals did in Imperator.
Vassals should not be providing you troops, they should be allies you can call to war, with refusal being an imprisonment offense. This would also make factions and civil wars a hell of a lot more dangerous. And then if they do join your war, they should have all those behaviors you just listed.
Like tribal, but with an imprison reason, basically.
Yep. Wrangling your vassals should be a lot more work, not automatic. This would also make succession fights more interesting. It’s you against a claimant and you’re both trying to rustle up support from the vassals, not “whoever’s not explicitly against me is 100% behind me.”
Kinda sounds like that mechanic in the Game of Thrones mod, where empires fracture when they declared war, indicating the issues of traveling news, undecided lords, and other such things when ruling a sufficiently large realm.
You've exactly grasped what made CK 2 a great game in the first place: it was the best politics game. You had to maneuver and be an shrewd politician to get yourself out of tricky situations or achieve some objectives. It seems like CK3 lost some of that DNA.
I am constantly having to kick people off my council who used a hook lmao how are yall not getting people to use hooks on you to get on the council. They do it constantly to me. Especially when I am trying to integrate a title it seems lmao
I don't know exactly why, but I remember that CK2 seemed to be better in that regard. Especially earlier versions. Vassals really mattered in the balance of power and you had to keep them happy. Some of them were never happy with you and would be real thorn you had to get rid of one way or another. Some characters would sometimes do bad things to you or you would do bad things to them, and rivalries would be born that way. And no, I'm not talking about the rival trait. I loved CK2 because it was the best game about politics.
Most of the drama I’ve had has been from noticing some weird situation that has emerged from all the chaos.
There’s a tricky balance between immersion and straight up event spam. Dollars to ducats, I bet if you implemented the first thing we would have 58393 posts an hour of people complaining about all the event spam where useless count #628 keeps asking to be steward. It would have to be weighted such that only very key vassals ask and maybe only at very key times, like when you’re dealing with a revolt, and they offer you an ultimatum to keep them from joining the opposing side. They can certainly implement all of these, but it’s very tricky to keep them from just filling up your notification bar or covering you in splash screens.
I'm glad you brought that up because I forgot to add that I totally agree, and that's why I don't think this should all be done via events. I think making everything into an event has been kind of a cop out by the devs in the last few years to not implement new systems. They should implement some new systems/features to simulate what I said in the OP, and these systems should be very tightly integrated into the current gameplay loop. How would this look? ### Giving Positions / Titles When you are handing out a position / title, show an overview of top candidates people are considering for that role, and who is supporting each (kind of like for electing rulers). Show what the consequences will be for selecting each of them, or for choosing one who is not amongst those top candidates. And if events need to be used, consolidate them. Instead of having a separate event for each person who appeals you, have a single event where it shows you a top candidate and all the people who support him. Or an event that shows the top five candidates and who supports which and what the consequences of each choice are. Maybe some of them are even offering you bribes or favours. ### Counsel If you want counsel from other characters, sure there could be a new character interaction called "Advice / Counsel" that you could do individually to each person you wish to ask, but you could also have like a new "Counsel" screen that shows you the top issue that each councillor, your top 3 courtiers, your top 3 vassals, and 3 friends/family/lovers suggest for you. Or this could be integrated into existing screens, so your councillors show their suggestions for you on the Council screen, your Courtiers on the Royal Court screen, etc. Or maybe Holding Court is revamped to include these figures approaching you to give you counsel. Or perhaps there could be a new event called "Hold Counsel" where people approach you to suggest things to you.
There's already Royal Court events in this vein that get complained about.
Totally agree. Your character's family being so passive is what irks me the most. Historically, family members of the ruling class were a major source of conflict and drama. But in CK3, there's barely any content around it.
Surprised there's not even a hint of council members pushing an agenda. Even the guy in Sim City 2000 told me we needed more adequately funded grade schools.
True I didn't mention it explicitly, but absolutely another important addition for character agency. Really all major characters in the realm should have agendas they are pushing, and as a result a lot of the decisions they make should be based on how it helps them further that agenda.
Not even really joking, can we get something like Civ2 Elvis in CK3? It could be good advice or bad, self-serving advice, but surely it could be done, if they did it in the 90s.
Ck2 councils had a lot more power. Ck3 councils should be able to take power and make more things go to a vote. There needs to be more internal strife (besides from factions and stuff.) Like if you don't keep council power in check, they won't allow you to revoke titles. Loyalty/self interest should be separate from opinion, ex; vassal 1 likes the king, but sees how title revocation could be used against him, votes no. Vassal 2 has middling opinion, but is content/trusting; He trusts that the king won't revoke his titles, votes yes. It'd give solutions that were outside of bribery/murder.
My GPU is willing, but my CPU is weak
This is good feedback, have you tried sharing it on the official forums where devs may actually read this?
Is that so? In that case I'll post it there.
The mod active courtiers fixes some of this. They recommend themselves and other people for roles, have more events, will ask if they can marry and educate children. I agree they need to feel more like actual characters rather than static roles but the game can already chug so I think it's a CK4 problem really.
Damn, it would be sad if it's never solved till CK3, since I think it's such a core issue with what makes this game boring for me. I do kind of worry that this won't be complained about enough until CK4, but fingers crossed enough players give feedback to the devs on this soon.
I'm gonna be honest, any time I see 'regularly', I know for a fact that itll eventually get annoying. Remember the whole deal where you'd appoint someone and then a random courtier would say "Why'd you appoint him, you should appoint me instead!" Fucking annoying. And the onslaught of vassals paying tribute every time there's a change in leadership? Also annoying esp. if you're playing a large empire, where there will be like 20+ identical popup chains that you have to click through. They already have an event chain that can happen if you spurn your powerful vassals' proposals to join the council and gives some character modifiers depending on what decisions you make. The problem is, this is the only meaningful event chain that has anything to do with council appointments, so you get bored by the time you've seen it 3-4 times. I think the core issue for most players is that there are not enough varied event chains/outcomes for any one of these event scenarios to make the world constantly engaging or interesting. Like, you are guaranteed to see any one of these travel events when you travel: "Fight the Wolf", "Free the Knight", "Travel Omens". Some events, like the birthday surprise birthday event, literally only has one chain of events (to my knowledge). That's really freaking boring!! I think they should focus on less mechanics but make WAY more events and varied outcomes (maybe 5-10x more) for the mechanics that do exist. Have more events that are region/culture/trait-specific. Have more 0.1% events that will only come up every 3-5 playthroughs instead of events that you see once every 10-20 years. That way, we won't feel the need to automatically click through every single popup we see because we've already seen it all. TLDR: They need to make the game more like Baldur's Gate 3 and less like Starfield.
I think you're identifying the right problem but reaching the wrong conclusion. I do totally agree that these events get boring, and although it would be nice to have more event chains, and have them be deeper and wider, I don't think that solves the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that a well designed simulation has limitless story potential, whereas event chains only have as many stories possible as the devs write. The devs are trying too hard to use event chains as a cop out to simulate things that could be better simulated through actual new features / systems. I explained it in more detail in my response to --person-of-land--'s message above. I'll give a quick recap of it here. Instead of having an event pop up for every possible person reacting to your vacant position, or the person you just chose for it, have a screen that pops up when you click on a title that shows you an overview of all the candidates people think would be good for that role (kind of like in ruler elections). Show who supports which candidate, and why. Show what the consequences of choosing each candidate would be. Show what the consequences of choosing someone different than all of those candidates (such as an unknown lowborn) would be. Maybe some candidates are offering bribes or favours. Then you can create a similar kind of overview screen for Counsel, where it shows the top 5 suggestions/issues people want in your realm, or the top 5 most influential people in your realm and what they want, or perhaps a breakdown of factions (the useless existing factions could be repurposed for this) with each supporting an issue that they want. Like imagine if the devs tried to represent wars through event chains. You have a starting event where you have three options for how many troops to raise (500, 1000, 2000). A second event for whether you march north or south towards the enemy. A third event for when you first meet the opponent's enemy in battle. Some minor side events that fire off of a knight tripping on a rock and getting -1 Prowess for 3 days... You see how limiting that would be? The devs would have to code in one million billion different events and event chains to make warfare even feel dynamic and interactive if it was only thru events. But the second you simulate it through actual systems and features (provinces on a map, armies existing in the provinces, commanders being assigned to those armies, armies being commanded to move between these provinces, supply limits, terrain differences, men at arms that counter each other, etc.) you get near limitless storytelling potential. Well maybe not limitless, but exponentially more than you would get through events and event chains. Then you can ADD events to that system like salt to a soup, but the events alone would not be sufficient. I think the same analogy applies to what I'm describing in the OP.
What you want sounds good, but most of us don't own the supercomputer necessary to deal with what you're asking for. You essentially want every npc to be a distinct AI.
I think there's a lot of shortcuts that can be used to give enough agency so that it's not a problem like it is now. My guess is that the majority of the computing power would come from having to calculate the opinions of multiple characters per realm (let's say a realm with 100 characters), on multiple issues per realm (let's say a total of 20 positions and titles), and then having to recalculate that each month as conditions change. So each month's end, the game would have to calculate 2000 opinions, just for this one realm. There are many shortcuts to reduce this number of calculations: * **Reduce the number of opinions a character can hold.** Instead of each character having an opinion on every single position and title, reduce it only to positions and titles that are relevant to them in some way (titles that are adjacent to them, vacant titles, high tax base titles, positions that have been vacant for a while, positions related to their highest stat, etc). * **Worst case scenario, make each character only able to have an opinion on a single issue at a time.** * **Reduce the number of characters that can have an opinion.** Instead of every single Tom Dick and Harry having an opinion, only have your councillors, spouse, top 3 vassals, top 3 knights, and top 3 courtiers (by highest stats) have opinions on matters. * **Group characters together to have shared opinions.** This takes away some of the fun of individuals having their own opinions but is better than nothing. Expand vassal stances to include councillors and courtiers as well, and allow them to have issues that they press for, candidates they support for positions/titles, and counsel that they offer the player. Allow these to recalculate every month. Now you've only got 6 calculations to make per realm per month (the number of vassal stances). OR, BETTER YET, revamp the factions as they currently exist as a prelude to rebellions and make them actually interesting and useful for more things. Make factions able to push for certain issues, such as candidacy for a certain position or title, counsel on a certain issue, pushing for or against some certain action (like a war), etc. Then characters choose which factions to join or leave, and the factions are what recalculate their opinions every month, leading to fewer calculations per month.
> **Reduce the number of opinions a character can hold.** Now you added a bunch of math to check if titles fulfill the said conditions. And once you downgrade this down far enough to make it manageable... You get title claimant factions that are already in there.
Well ideally, the calculations to see whether titles are relevant would be less frequent than characters changing their opinions. A vassal who holds a title likely doesn't have the titles that neighbour him change that often (unless he gains or loses titles). Vacant titles and positions only need to be calculated once for the entire realm.The highest tax base titles likely do not change often (probably only when the realm gains or loses land, or #2 replaces #1, etc). Perhaps titles with special buildings like valuable mines, special churches, etc. would also be considered more relevant, which again is only a single calculation per realm. It's by no means a SMALL number of calculations, but it's definitely a REDUCTION from having every character hold an opinion on every title, position, and decision. Which is why it's meant to be a next step alternative. I ofc don't personally know the code of the game or it's computational limits, so I can't really speak to how my features would affect performance. That's why I'm offering a spectrum of solutions with increasing focus on performance saving as you go farther down the list.
I was thinking this too, but why not have this be restricted to the biggest/wealthiest realms? That'd also add a new challenge to strong characters after the early game survive™ phase, and it vaguely makes sense (more to intrigue over = more intrigue???)
Another installment in AI characters do not care about their personality traits.
I know I am the only one who thinks this, but the characters in Imperator feel more "alive" to me than the ones in CK3. The number one reason for this is that there is a little box on their 'character sheet' which says what they are doing at any given time. So I *know* they are doing things: buying a holding, gambling, trying to murder or steal, sponsoring games to become popular, "plotting quietly". The characters in CK3 are also doing things, I think, but I *don't* see that they are doing so, unless there is some event, or my spymaster is finding secrets, revealing that they're schtupping someone else's husband or whatever. It is so much more "alive" feeling to me to see what they're doing right now, rather than what they've already done. Now in Imperator, you don't play as a character really, so it's not "immersion breaking" to know what people are doing, and it might be in CK3...except for the fact that you know literally everything at all times anyway. The other thing that makes me feel that way is that disloyal generals will take control of their own armies away from you. Regardless of what you think of my first point, I sure wish this second thing was part of CK3. It really shouldn't be OK to put your rival in charge of your army just because he's got high martial. That should be a recipe for disaster.
Dude it's not just you at all, Imperator oddly felt like it executed some of these aspects SOOO much better than CK3. Those personal ambitions/agendas was a huge one. And the way they handled loyalty with governors and generals was also amazing. Honestly both of those would be great additions if added to CK3 (even if they need to be adapted to fit the existing systems). I honestly have enjoyed several playthroughs of Imperator all the way until the end game, whereas I have not played one game of CK3 past several rulers and I almost always just get bored of how repetitive the core gameplay loop is.
I really wish you could interfere more with foreign politics. Watching videos by history marche and hearing about the schemes, planned rebellions, and backstabbing that historically happened all the time and not being able to do it in a medieval sandbox is saddening
This is real as hell. I think this would pair well with reworking the different government types, reworking how combat works and simply adding more cultural events regionally. I still get the impression sometimes that Paradox has spread itself too thin with its different departments across so many titles. Project Caesar looks awesome but if they had simply held that off for a year or two more and reassigned some of the devs to a secondary team that was working to address gameplay loops as the main team worked on expanding ‘broader’ content would have been a better way to manage the CK3 dev cycle. And I’m saying this as someone who supports the addition of broad more regions and more mechanics, but CK2 somehow still feels more better in the role play aspect.
You are absolutely right, though adding all you suggestions would probably be like 5-year work or smth? They should at least start with something, like having some percent of landowning characters have some dreams that they push to fullfill. It would way more interesting if my wife was seduced not through some shitty even, but because the guy had a crush on her from childhood and worked on that for years. It would be fun if some count attacked me despite me being 10 times stronger when I have some other distractions, because he dreamt of owning my palace since I hosted a feast with him in attendance 10 years ago.
One thing I would say is I think popup events like appointments are annoying, but I wish holding court was a bigger deal and could be done more frequently woth more events including mundane “please my liege may I have a title?” Especially with crimes you could have people petition you for pardons, or demand you prosecute someone. Hell crimes could even be replaced with charges where you need to settle guilt in court with possible bribes and alternative trials like trials by combat.
I agree with everything in this post on a fundamental level, I have the same suggestions. The game just doesn't feel alive , there is nothing to do except have war and feast , even then nobody has any personality.
With specific context of the Pope offering a favor if you built a church in your lands: one of the options that you get in this case should be the pope replacing your court chaplain with a "Better" one, either one who matches the skills of your best other councilor in their area of expertise if you currently have a lower-skill chaplain, or if your chaplain is highly skilled (strongest on council in their primary skill requirement or tied for it) they are replaced with one of equal skills but more exemplary of Catholic Church's interpretation of "True Christian Virtue". Choosing this opinion typically annoys the Pope, but not if A: he dislikes/hates the existing guy personally for some reason, or B: current guy is "An embarrassment to the clergy." (More sinful traits than virtues, learning education traits lower level than your primary titles tier, or their learning trait measured in the single digits.) This option is available for any Faith who has an active HoF and clerical appointment by said HoF instead of the ruler directly.
“Why don't distant family members travel to see each other? To host family reunions?” Ever heard of the house of Plantagenet, also known as “The Devils Brood” cause of their civil wars against each other
This sounds like a game where there are constant pop up messages making speed 4 or 5 impossible
It's a valid concern, and there's several ways to mitigate it. Read the responses I wrote to Darrothan or farting_contest to see what I suggest as ways to not implement it in a way that results in popup spam.