Yeah, Grand Strategy is cool, but there just aren't as many games coming out as there could be.
Empires had a good building system and even the simpler in game battle resolve was half decent, and of course turn based games are superior, but Empires did feel a bit lacklustre. It is very much a war game, which the main unique feature of "nation ages" being a very tokeny/victory pointy type thing which puts me off. Same for the legacy point system.
Dev Diary #130 – Wards and Wardens - The Vision
Hello all!
- Thread starterParadoksalny Kierownik
- Start dateJun 15, 2023
It's been a few weeks since we spoke but it feels like longer, what with all of you having been busy traveling, touring, tournamenting and the rest! It is time for us, nonetheless, to leave behind that world for now and take a look ahead at what we have coming up next.
Vision
Our first Event Pack, Friends & Foes, gave us something of a chance to experiment. Since then, we’ve had the chance to take a look at exactly what direction we want to start moving in with these packs, and build on what worked.
One area that we hit upon was diversity of content and how the player experienced the game. Events are the ink that we daub on to the fabric of the narrative, but it’s how, what and why these events happen that govern their efficacy. Introducing new avenues for that content to reach the player is a great thing, provided it’s done in an unobtrusive way.
With that in mind, we’re going to outline a few of the new features that you’ll find in Wards & Wardens (the event-pack that you voted for last January) and its accompanying patch - both available on August 22nd. Some of them we’ll talk about more in the future, so don’t expect anything too exhaustive here, but let’s start off with…
Captivating features
Hostages aren’t quite what you’d think of when you hear the term. Rather than forced holding of a person to ransom, hostageship in the Middle Ages was a political and legal status that was absolutely widespread.
Put simply, hostages were generally given, not taken. They were, essentially, transactional guarantees. In this case, we’ve zeroed in on the most common reason for hostages to be exchanged: as a means to guarantee a peace treaty.
In Wards & Wardens, hostages are a new type of relation somewhere between a prisoner and a foreign court guest. They reside at your court as a guest would, but cannot leave of their own accord, nor can they become knights. They are generally - though not always - children, and have found themselves in such a predicament due to their liege exchanging them away as a guarantee of non-hostility following a war, or exchanged via interaction during peacetime. Such an arrangement not only eases the mediation process, but also gives both sides some peace of mind.
Hostages are essentially living non-aggression pacts. Harming a hostage is a significant diplomatic incident, but it’s also a way to deter your former enemies from getting any more bright ideas about exactly to whom that border county belongs. Any ruler that you have a hostage from will suffer significant debuffs and penalties should they try and attack you - and any wardens attacking home courts also suffer similar debuffs - so hostages present one of the strongest forms of deterrent possible.
The hostages themselves are kept in line via something else new and shiny:
In Perpetuity
We have two types of Hook extant in the game already: Strong and Weak. The latter are the type of hooks you’d get if you were to, for example, manipulate a person in some way. They are single-use, and can be refused at cost. Strong hooks, on the other hand, can be used multiple times and in a range of scenarios, but are also much rarer.
Perpetual Hooks are a new sort of hook, which wardens can get on hostages who they treat well, and represent something of a middle ground. They are refuseable like Weak hooks, but also permanent like a Strong hook. At the moment hostages (and those that have previously been hostages) are the only characters you’d expect to see with a Perpetual hook, but just as Memories were built with expansion in mind for Friends & Foes, so too should you not be surprised if in the future you find more and wider examples of Perpetual hook usage.
What An Odd Fellow!
One of the spots that we’ve been somewhat hamstrung by in CKIII is in mediating the existence of characters that don’t quite… fit the mould, as it were.
In CKII, you’d have insane and possessed characters who did all kinds of wacky things - immortal horse chancellors and such; you know how it goes. CKIII’s takes a more grounded approach to how traits are represented: Lunatic, for example, was used increasingly loosely in CKII, ending up as an umbrella for anything ranging from slightly kooky to genuine mental illness, but CKIII sticks much more rigidly to the latter.
This is where the Eccentric trait comes in, as a trait dedicated to the slightly odd. This allows us to group some of the more unusual situations you’d find under this new personality trait, giving them both more reason to happen for a certain character but, critically, also barring those characters who wouldn’t engage in such strange distractions from doing so. We’ll talk about this more in the coming weeks!
A Midwife Crisis
As you might expect given how hostageship skews very much towards the young, a fair percentage of what we’ve been working on has been filling out the experience of non-adult existence in Crusader Kings III. We’ve come some way in this regard since release, with Friends & Foes adding a swathe of new events and a revamp of childhood personality traits, as well as of course the Regency mechanic giving a whole new layer of intrigue to a child navigating the dangerous Medieval world.
In Wards & Wardens, we’ve added to this with another fresh layer of childhood content - in no small part focused on hostages and their experiences - but also the addition of a Wet Nurse court position. Wet nurses held an interesting status amongst the medieval court, and adding this court position adds another layer of intricacy to the trials and tribulations of raising a child.
Mature Students
We have been delighted to read just how much you all have been enjoying all the new - and the old! - activities in CKIII since the release of Tours & Tournaments. With this in mind, we’ve attempted to utilize it to approach something that’s previously been static in Crusader Kings: education as an adult.
Previously, once you had come of age, an education type and rank was assigned to you and that was that. You, aged 16, were as educated as you’d ever become! Now, whilst properly reflecting the rate at which humans grow as people as they age is something of an impossible task for a game, the current system felt a little too rigid for our liking. As such, the Adult Education activity now gives players a chance to tickle their brains at a center of learning, in hope that they can actually upgrade their education trait to a higher level!
But what of those of us who enter adulthood with the finest education life has to offer? What steps can those people take to better themselves in adulthood?
Worry not. We have a plan for that, too, but it will have to wait!
Goodbye For Now
Thankfully, however, you won’t have to wait all too long. Whilst we’re saying bye for now, next week @Areysak will be taking us through the Adult Education Activity in CKIII from top to bottom. Hope to see you all then!
Dev Diary #131 – CKIII University 101
- Thread starterPortable Grump
- Start dateTuesday at 09:30
Opening Remarks
Good afternoon, and welcome to your first class of the semester! My name is Dr. Areysak, and I’ll be your “CKIII University 101” lecturer.
I already see some raised hands. You, in the first row, ask away.
“Why a University Activity? What does it have to do with Wards and Wardens?”
This is a very interesting question. During the early development of Wards and Wardens, talks of hostages’ education led us to a realization: everything that could influence a character’s education trait happens during childhood. Once a character reaches 16 years of age, they are locked out of any further improvement! And if the player character isn’t directly responsible for the education of their heir, a player can find themselves inheriting an already adult heir character with an education trait they have had no way to influence.
The University Visit activity is the solution we have chosen to open up new possibilities to the player to influence their character’s personal growth. Therefore, as a first aim, it fulfills a gameplay need; secondly, it allows us to expand upon one of the Middle Ages’ many successful inventions, Universities; thirdly, we got to add a new activity!
When we talk of Medieval Universities, we are immediately led to think of the famous names of Western Europe, such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Bologna. The name “University”, in fact, comes from Latin and was born to describe specifically the communities (= universitates) of Latin-speaking teachers and students that congregated in these European cities. However, similar institutions existed all over the Old World. Particularly famous are the Indian “universities”, such as Takshashila and Nalanda; the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was one of the most renowned centers of studies of its age, and Madrasas schools were widespread throughout the Islamic world. In this period, it’s also often difficult to separate, as we would do today, between lay and religious centers of studies, since Christian cathedrals, Muslim mosques and, in particular, Buddhist temples were themselves libraries, scriptoria (i.e., where manuscripts were copied), and educational institutions, or had these institutions develop in their immediate vicinity.
The Activity
Let’s now have a look at the activity itself, though!
The University Visit is a minor activity that adult landed rulers can always initiate, as long as they have the gold! To keep it in line with the pre-existing decision to Go to University, it is quite expensive. To keep the challenge balanced, the final cost is dynamic (like with all activities) and changes with your tier and era.
(Activity selection interface showing the University Visit)
The activity takes 6 months, and can only be started once every 20 years, and only once per location.
In order to Visit a University, you have to select a valid location in your diplomatic range and travel there.
(Activity destination selection interface)
You might have noticed, however, that not all valid locations are University seats. As discussed above, large religious centers were often centers of study too, and have been included as potential destinations.
(The tooltip of a large religious center)
Being a minor activity, the choice of intents and options is limited but flavorful.
There are only two intents available, but they represent two contrasting approaches to your university experience, and will significantly change both your approach to your studies and the results you can achieve. In fact, every activity event will have at least one special option unlocked by each intent!
“Study Hard” is quite self-explanatory: you went there to study, and study hard you will, no matter the stress cost you’ll have to pay! You try to make the most of your time at University, in order to maximize your chances of success at the end of the activity and increase your rewards.
In fact, the results (and rewards) you obtain at the end of your studies are measured by a value called “Studiousness”, which is a “success” chance similar, e.g., to a Pilgrimage’s Piousness. The activity can’t fail per se, but the entity of your rewards will depend on this value.
“Goliardic Lifestyle” is a completely different approach, inspired by the European Goliards, wandering students and clerics famous for their satirical poetry (for instance the Carmina Burana) exalting the art of drinking and carnal pleasures. With this intent, your aim is to gain as much first-hand experience of life, both inside and outside the walls of the University, indulging in so-called “Goliardic Shenanigans”. I’ll leave you the pleasure of discovering exactly what your character can get up to; the general idea of the intent, however, is to gain less success chance (and therefore less rewards at the conclusion of the activity), but more immediate bonuses such as lifestyle traits, lifestyle xp, and skill points.
(Intents view)
On the other hand, we only have one option with 3 levels, which represent how much money you plan to invest in study materials. The option chosen will influence your success chance and final rewards, including an Illustrious artifact! (cost values are still wip)
(Options view)
(Arrival event)
As you can see, your level of Studiousness is easily traceable from the activity view. To make the interactions more impactful, we have limited the number of guests, which are only a handful of students and teachers, which will be among the wisest minds on the map!
(Activity view and teacher’s character view)
(Event with Study Hard option)
(Event with Goliardic Lifestyle options)
Be ready to gain a whole bunch of stress! Nobody said that getting a degree was easy…
I did mention that your teachers will be among the most brilliant minds around, and I’d like to stress it again because if you manage to make a very good impression on them…
(Conclusion event)
You will be able to invite one of them to move back to your court with you!
But hold on, there is something weird with this teacher… What is that?!
(Teacher’s character view with education trait tooltip)
Is that… A fifth level of the Education Trait?!
YES!
Concurrently with the University Visit activity, we have added a new level to all education traits. This final level will be super rare, and mostly reserved for University teachers and University graduates who already started with the fourth-tier trait.
Rewards
As you might have guessed from what has been discussed so far, the main reward for the activity is increasing your education trait one level up. However, there is only a chance to succeed in this endeavor! This chance is higher the lower you current level is (i.e., it’s easier to get from tier 1 to 2 than it is from 2 to 3) and the higher your Studiousness level is.
(Tooltip of Tier 4 of Studiousness with the rewards)
However, even if you were to fail at improving your education, you are ensured to gain a number of Perk points that increases with your achieved Studiousness, an assortment of xp and skill points depending on your event choices, and even an Illustrious book if you chose the most expensive option during the activity setup (and therefore went splurging on rare manuscripts)!
(A randomly generated Illustrious book)
Conclusions
This concludes today’s lecture. I hear some buzzing from the end rows, are there any questions?
“But that’s not how Universities worked! No ruler would go to University like a commoner!!”
You are, of course, correct. We are perfectly aware of it. However, we believe that the combined bonuses offered by new gameplay possibilities (i.e., improving your character’s education and skills) and the historical flavor of showing a slice of the life at Medieval Universities more than warranted the exception!
I hope you are excited to Visit a University soon!
This is the last Dev Diary before the July break, so it seems fitting to just say:
School’s out! Have a nice summer! And see you all back in August!
The problem is that CK3 doesn't even have an actual social simulation so the wet nurse is flavorful or w/e but it doesn't really do anything mechanically.
Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about. The design focus is all over the place. All relationships get abstracted into a flat modifier like opinion, but other areas are needlessly fleshed out and detailed in comparison. Either go full Crusader Sims 3 or leave it be and let me paint maps.
The whole concept of the game is broken because the characters don't have real relationships, and more importantly the institutions and character aggregates like familys and religion and "realms" don't have real relationships. Generations of loyal bannerman/vassals? Nope. Long running feuds that stem from actual gameplay and not stupid events and rng? Not in Paradox's medieval period.
CK3 is powered by memer streamers and Sims: Medieval refugees plus Sims 4 players coming along from that community.
I think all landed vassals can't be knights, not just player characters.
Sorry, I misremembered the restriction. Players can't be knights, I think because it is too risky and takes away too much agency or some dumb shit like that.
I thought Empires was lovely. Except that it becomes unplayable after a certain point because AI turns start taking up a couple of minutes, and it seems to be unrelated to PC power.
Suzerain was cool and all but it is heavily restricted and linear in a lot of ways. The trade off is having pretty good dialogue and vibes, and nice graphics.
You might just as well ask "Do people really play this meaningless game"?
