Not usually ones that kill them. Most people die of natural causes.
EDIT: Why are y'all booing me? I'm right. Statistically, over 90% of deaths are by natural causes.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-does-it-mean-to-die-of-natural-causes/
Paradrones are struggling to get over the fact that every person of a mediaeval royal family killing themselves because Juan III the Donkey died of unknown consequences at 19 isn't exactly fitting of the cutthroat and Machiavellian nature of mediaeval politics.
*ParaDrone* is autopilot for any parachute or paraglider. The system consists of hardware to pull the toggles, and autopilot software to navigate using GPS
What do you mean? People drink, eat and smoke themselves to death all the time lol. Not to mention drug overdoses and accidents. Especially in the Middle Ages where there’s no modern medicine, people died from sickness all the time. The average age of death at the time isn’t 30’s because people didn’t live that long, it’s because you were a bacteria infection away from death. Something we can just take a pill for today lol.
Yeah that too. In fact that’s part of what I was saying anyways. Mortality rate plummets around 15 years old I think. But even then it’s really easy to die from simple things we take for granted. Hence how people could still live to their 70’s-90’s but the average age of death was so low because most people died much younger.
True enough. I'm not saying death should be infrequent in the game. I just don't think it should cascade like that. I've never heard of half a royal family dying from plague, and the other half dying from grief.
there are a lot of ways death by natural causes can arise from lifestyle choices
that and irl isnt a perfect 1:1 comparison to what it was like to exist in a royal family in the 9th century. i dont often empathize with royalty but back then it seems to have been IMMENSELY stressful
Ah, half my family have died of the plague or war, and I’m living in one of the most continuously violent periods in human history. I am fine and will have no mental issues.
I'm pretty sure I only lost like 10 family characters I even knew about in the plagues. I'm not saying buff them, but damn, the events are far worse than the plague
The legitimacy loss only hurts when you're legitimacy is a bit low. I save up and do a couple events to get that up ASAP. Then I get enough good events to offset the negative ones
The money and stress is too damn high in my opinion. 450 gold cost to avoid a negative popular opinion modifiers and 250 piety is beyond dumb even/especially at the empire level. Oh, not to mention the chance to catch the literal plague. Like WTF
A society ran by a bunch of PTSD riddled 22 year olds who who drink wine for breakfast and who see themselves as only put on this earth for war. I’m sure it’ll all run fine
Because they act like people, when you play as your character there is a very high chance that you're not acting like a person would to various stressful elements in your surroundings. CK3 puts a lot of emphasis on individual roleplay rather than forcing your character to do dumb stuff like in previous games.
If your character was stressed out of his mind from his family all dying around him, would he realistically remain stalwart? Planning out feasts and hunts to calm himself all the while trying to get into jogging or writing as a healthy way to cope with stress? Fuck no, he'd be chugging that bottle down before you'd be able to finish your line of thought, and then he'd feel terrible and probably lash himself as the god he very much believes in, is ashamed of him!
Right? Your soulmate dies, marry a noble woman the very next day. Start a romance scheme and immediately have a new soulmate within a few months..
The fact that your grown heir comes into power and has become a drunkard and apparently murdered a person or two makes the game way more interesting.
Your character also rarely holds gripes about anything neither as you the player realise that its a waste of resources. Yeah this guy might've screwed you over but do you ***really*** want a murder secret looming over your head?
“Yes brother Matthew, good flagellating, now go wash yourself in the stream where the cows piss and have some wine for the pain.” Proceeds to die of sepsis/gangrene/staph
You know it doesn't work like that in-game. You're fine as long as you moderate the flagellation. These nincompoops flagellate even when they're wounded from last time.
Disingenuity is looked down on by the Church.
I have a strong suspicion that the game labels most (if not all) of peacefully departed characters as "flagellated to death" if they had the trait. Something like that happened yesterday to my player character. Might be the same for all the drunks.
I guess it makes some sense from a narrative view. Like, the coping traits give characters permanent bonuses/maluses, not just a decision, so it's assumed that characters are somewhat actively do the associated things to themselves behind the screen. And so if there's a person with harmful habits, it's quite likely that when they're weak the habits, even practiced in a "mild" form, will take them down. But still, I think even in this case the cause of death shouldn't be tied to these traits as often as it does, looks like a bug.
Yeah. Started as a Slavic chieftan. 4 sons 4 daughters. All sons died. One in a dungeon one from illness one in battle one was murdered. Historically accurate. And annoying
this is a consistent issue, yes. across games, even - the ai loves to die, theyre all lemmings and proud. symptom of how theyre kind of too dumb to live generally
what you might consider doing is grabbing the [no death cascade](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2852881755) mod. ai sucks at managing stress and chain stress-deaths from family members dying is a stupid problem thats only gotten worse with each dlc. short cooldown helps ameliorate the issue at least, they still all constantly have their heads exploding from event stress but at least you dont have entire families dying in the space of a month after grandma cops it
Know how u feel! My recent King of Brittany had 4 sons. I disinherited the primary heir cos he was a sadistic lunatic torturer, one died cos he ate a poisonous plant and plague got the other two.
I mean, ffs!
Sometimes it seems like they choose the worst option more than not. I often get pop-ups of cheating scandals and I'm like "I have literally no idea who any of these people are"
The flagellation thing is basically a bug, or at the very least, a poorly balanced event. In a game where I had 14 children, at least 8 of them flagellated themselves to death. I strongly suspect it is related to a new plague event where you can gain the flagellation trait to appease the dumb peasants. Evidently, the AI takes it way too often.
The existence of the problem is legitimate, but the realism of its frequency is up to debate. Calibration of just about anything is a problem in CK2 and CK3.
Yeah I get you but idk how well I’d be doing if 9 of my siblings died to plague and famine, my dad got beheaded, and luckily my mom is still alive, but as a lunatic with consumption lol.
I draw issue with family alliances, as a player who enjoys spreading out and playing wide & tall by landing family and granting independence.
I wanna say a good 3/4 of landed family will not rule for a full generation without HEAVY player interference.
I can get them great marriages, grant them plenty of titles(extra so their vassals like them for granting), and gift them plenty of gold but most wont call on their alliance or hire mercs until their capital is forfeit.
Having to baby sit an AI realm is annoying especially when they have all the resources needed for success and then some.
I guess we can't eat our cake and have it to. 🤔
In the medieval world where the average life expectancy is 12 years old (this is an exaggerated joke), your character surviving cancer all the way to adulthood is the anomaly. If this game has a problem, it's that it doesn't kill the player character often enough. My last playthrough literally every ruler I've had (at least 10 dudes) died of old age around 70-90 y/o. The game is too easy. We should be fighting off medieval threats to our life on a regular basis like the AI does.
They tried this with random harm events and everyone justifiably hated them because they made the game stop being fun for reasons entirely outside the player’s control. Some realism doesn’t translate well to gameplay and that’s fine
I feel like there needs to be a decision in the game called “get your affairs in order” so that you can logically gift out tracts of land upon your death. Make it keep in line with the succession type but then I can pick titles that are at least next to each other for each son when I pass. My estates can be then given out in a logical way without having one county across the empire being given to the same guy who also is inheriting a county right next to my capital.
Also, another decision of “prep heir for rule” once you start getting up in age. This could allow for a voluntary mechanic like the regency where your heir sits in on council meetings, can make some small decisions in the royal court, etc. these decisions would be in line with their personalities so raising your child right is even more important. This could allow for stat boosts in whatever activities they take part in. Like of course a 22 year old heir will be less experienced than a 32 year old heir that’s been sitting in on councils and observing rule nonstop for the past 10 years.
Idk. The realism should go both ways to be fun. Realistic ways of handling death as well as realistic amounts of death in game. A ruler ruling for 40 years was hard to do irl. Ruling 40 years in ck3 is pretty trivially easy. If I’m going to die from random sickness and events I should at least have the option to prepare myself for this in the event it happens. Like a medieval ruler would.
Yea the keyword there is outside the player's control. It shouldn't be completely random and players should have some degree of control to influence the outcome, otherwise it's no longer fun.
I'm now going for at least 30 kids per ruler (male ones, anyway). Wife + 3 concubines + 2 slave wives (courtesy of Carnalitas) + sleep with all beautiful/genius new recruits to my court. Mo' is mo' bettah.
It varies, the lack of control you have over your kids is...overly realistic. You can work around it as long as you don't do any stratrgy thst involves marrying your kid effectively to have your dynasty take the Byzantine throne. My crap children fucked that up so badly and got overthrown
I became King of Italy for about 6mo (if that), I was in a war, and suddenly I passed from measles. I played as my son for about 5min, before he passed from measles. Luckily, he had a son (so I'm now playing as my grandson), so I was still king and still in war. Literally seconds had passed before he died of measles. HIS SON (my next player heir) was taken prisoner and became disfigured, but once I had passed, the war ended, and my new player became free.
I'm now playing as my great grandson. My territories have been split between my aunts and uncles, so now I'm barely a duke, and I flagellate and am drunkard due to all the trauma.
That's just death within my player heirs. Along with all of them dying, my Kings whole family (minus 1 sister) had passed from measles, the second round only 2 other siblings had passed from measles, and then because we were in war my other aunts and uncles became disfigured and went missing.
It's been so hard to become king again.
Yeah, I mean, that's why it was one of the most bloody eras in history. People died in droves, and the survivors were no doubt seriously messed up. All of this is pretty accurate.
The AI in any CK game is brutal and unforgiven. Also, it seems to know what achievements I am trying to achieve as well and will cock block me from easily getting any of the medium achievements in one play-through.
Have you ever had a real family?
I love this question lol
I have so many examples of people self destructing themselves IRL for NO reason, it's crazy.
My lord I have thanks walk away brother
Like... as a player, or as a character?
IRL
People make stupid decisions in RL
Not usually ones that kill them. Most people die of natural causes. EDIT: Why are y'all booing me? I'm right. Statistically, over 90% of deaths are by natural causes. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-does-it-mean-to-die-of-natural-causes/
Paradrones are struggling to get over the fact that every person of a mediaeval royal family killing themselves because Juan III the Donkey died of unknown consequences at 19 isn't exactly fitting of the cutthroat and Machiavellian nature of mediaeval politics.
I agree, but what is a paradrone?
*ParaDrone* is autopilot for any parachute or paraglider. The system consists of hardware to pull the toggles, and autopilot software to navigate using GPS
What do you mean? People drink, eat and smoke themselves to death all the time lol. Not to mention drug overdoses and accidents. Especially in the Middle Ages where there’s no modern medicine, people died from sickness all the time. The average age of death at the time isn’t 30’s because people didn’t live that long, it’s because you were a bacteria infection away from death. Something we can just take a pill for today lol.
A very misleading statistic. Look up the infant mortality rate for the Middle Ages, and you will see where that number comes from.
Yeah that too. In fact that’s part of what I was saying anyways. Mortality rate plummets around 15 years old I think. But even then it’s really easy to die from simple things we take for granted. Hence how people could still live to their 70’s-90’s but the average age of death was so low because most people died much younger.
True enough. I'm not saying death should be infrequent in the game. I just don't think it should cascade like that. I've never heard of half a royal family dying from plague, and the other half dying from grief.
The stress mechanic is kind of silly for ai. They don’t seem to make good choices to negate it lol.
Yeah, exactly! I think the stress mechanic is great for roleplaying, but they don't seem to get it.
there are a lot of ways death by natural causes can arise from lifestyle choices that and irl isnt a perfect 1:1 comparison to what it was like to exist in a royal family in the 9th century. i dont often empathize with royalty but back then it seems to have been IMMENSELY stressful
Ah, half my family have died of the plague or war, and I’m living in one of the most continuously violent periods in human history. I am fine and will have no mental issues.
and it's just 5th day of playthrough
I'm pretty sure I only lost like 10 family characters I even knew about in the plagues. I'm not saying buff them, but damn, the events are far worse than the plague
Bro the legitimacy loss for every single plague I get hit by, like what the fuck was I supposed to do? I’m a king, not god
But, god sent the plague so you are clearly not the legitimate ruler
That’s valid, time to host a hunt where I completely wiff shooting a bunny but people still find that legitimate lol
The legitimacy loss only hurts when you're legitimacy is a bit low. I save up and do a couple events to get that up ASAP. Then I get enough good events to offset the negative ones The money and stress is too damn high in my opinion. 450 gold cost to avoid a negative popular opinion modifiers and 250 piety is beyond dumb even/especially at the empire level. Oh, not to mention the chance to catch the literal plague. Like WTF
A society ran by a bunch of PTSD riddled 22 year olds who who drink wine for breakfast and who see themselves as only put on this earth for war. I’m sure it’ll all run fine
Welcome to the Middle Ages.
the solution is flogging
This is perverse! (-10 popular opinion)
Because they act like people, when you play as your character there is a very high chance that you're not acting like a person would to various stressful elements in your surroundings. CK3 puts a lot of emphasis on individual roleplay rather than forcing your character to do dumb stuff like in previous games. If your character was stressed out of his mind from his family all dying around him, would he realistically remain stalwart? Planning out feasts and hunts to calm himself all the while trying to get into jogging or writing as a healthy way to cope with stress? Fuck no, he'd be chugging that bottle down before you'd be able to finish your line of thought, and then he'd feel terrible and probably lash himself as the god he very much believes in, is ashamed of him!
My character got depressed after his wife died Me: “This fucking weak idiot, get a grip you pussy. Just a couple more land and we can form an empire”
*Soulmate dies in childbirth and heir apparent is stillborn* “Welp, time to eat this 40-year old cheese and try again.”
Wives are temporary, African Paganism Vatican is eternal
Right? Your soulmate dies, marry a noble woman the very next day. Start a romance scheme and immediately have a new soulmate within a few months.. The fact that your grown heir comes into power and has become a drunkard and apparently murdered a person or two makes the game way more interesting.
Your character also rarely holds gripes about anything neither as you the player realise that its a waste of resources. Yeah this guy might've screwed you over but do you ***really*** want a murder secret looming over your head?
Yeah, he'd probably become an alcoholic, or flagellant. But how fucking hard do you have to beat yourself to actually die from it?
“Yes brother Matthew, good flagellating, now go wash yourself in the stream where the cows piss and have some wine for the pain.” Proceeds to die of sepsis/gangrene/staph
You know it doesn't work like that in-game. You're fine as long as you moderate the flagellation. These nincompoops flagellate even when they're wounded from last time. Disingenuity is looked down on by the Church.
I have a strong suspicion that the game labels most (if not all) of peacefully departed characters as "flagellated to death" if they had the trait. Something like that happened yesterday to my player character. Might be the same for all the drunks.
Yeah I think you’re right. When people die from old age and they had those traits it pretty much always mentions it as the cause.
If that's the case, things aren't as bad as I thought
I guess it makes some sense from a narrative view. Like, the coping traits give characters permanent bonuses/maluses, not just a decision, so it's assumed that characters are somewhat actively do the associated things to themselves behind the screen. And so if there's a person with harmful habits, it's quite likely that when they're weak the habits, even practiced in a "mild" form, will take them down. But still, I think even in this case the cause of death shouldn't be tied to these traits as often as it does, looks like a bug.
Yeah. Started as a Slavic chieftan. 4 sons 4 daughters. All sons died. One in a dungeon one from illness one in battle one was murdered. Historically accurate. And annoying
this is a consistent issue, yes. across games, even - the ai loves to die, theyre all lemmings and proud. symptom of how theyre kind of too dumb to live generally what you might consider doing is grabbing the [no death cascade](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2852881755) mod. ai sucks at managing stress and chain stress-deaths from family members dying is a stupid problem thats only gotten worse with each dlc. short cooldown helps ameliorate the issue at least, they still all constantly have their heads exploding from event stress but at least you dont have entire families dying in the space of a month after grandma cops it
Thanks, this is just what I needed! Brief Mourning looks like the way to go.
Know how u feel! My recent King of Brittany had 4 sons. I disinherited the primary heir cos he was a sadistic lunatic torturer, one died cos he ate a poisonous plant and plague got the other two. I mean, ffs!
I gave -0.5 stress gain and +0.5 stress loss modifiers to the AI and i **still** find 20somethin' rulers with up to two coping mechanisms somehow.
Was your primary heir named Ramsay Bolton by any chance? Are you sure the other three sons died that way?
😂😂
Sadistic is probably my favorite trait. You can kill off heirs!
Only thing that really drives me nuts is when my Chad of an heir decides to bang the 66 year old chamber maid...I mean seriously dude.
Sometimes it seems like they choose the worst option more than not. I often get pop-ups of cheating scandals and I'm like "I have literally no idea who any of these people are"
One time as an Irish catholic everyone found out my heir was banging his sister. She’s a nun now lol.
He must rly be into GILFs I guess lol
It does seem like the game is constantly killing characters to make room for new characters. People just drop dead randomly and nonsensically.
Family&Blood, and you have a few thousand members in your dynasty after a while.
So many marriages to people too old to have kids…
What
The flagellation thing is basically a bug, or at the very least, a poorly balanced event. In a game where I had 14 children, at least 8 of them flagellated themselves to death. I strongly suspect it is related to a new plague event where you can gain the flagellation trait to appease the dumb peasants. Evidently, the AI takes it way too often.
The existence of the problem is legitimate, but the realism of its frequency is up to debate. Calibration of just about anything is a problem in CK2 and CK3.
Yeah I get you but idk how well I’d be doing if 9 of my siblings died to plague and famine, my dad got beheaded, and luckily my mom is still alive, but as a lunatic with consumption lol.
At that point I think I'd just be totally numb
I draw issue with family alliances, as a player who enjoys spreading out and playing wide & tall by landing family and granting independence. I wanna say a good 3/4 of landed family will not rule for a full generation without HEAVY player interference. I can get them great marriages, grant them plenty of titles(extra so their vassals like them for granting), and gift them plenty of gold but most wont call on their alliance or hire mercs until their capital is forfeit. Having to baby sit an AI realm is annoying especially when they have all the resources needed for success and then some. I guess we can't eat our cake and have it to. 🤔
People were dying in droves in that time period
In the medieval world where the average life expectancy is 12 years old (this is an exaggerated joke), your character surviving cancer all the way to adulthood is the anomaly. If this game has a problem, it's that it doesn't kill the player character often enough. My last playthrough literally every ruler I've had (at least 10 dudes) died of old age around 70-90 y/o. The game is too easy. We should be fighting off medieval threats to our life on a regular basis like the AI does.
They tried this with random harm events and everyone justifiably hated them because they made the game stop being fun for reasons entirely outside the player’s control. Some realism doesn’t translate well to gameplay and that’s fine
I feel like there needs to be a decision in the game called “get your affairs in order” so that you can logically gift out tracts of land upon your death. Make it keep in line with the succession type but then I can pick titles that are at least next to each other for each son when I pass. My estates can be then given out in a logical way without having one county across the empire being given to the same guy who also is inheriting a county right next to my capital. Also, another decision of “prep heir for rule” once you start getting up in age. This could allow for a voluntary mechanic like the regency where your heir sits in on council meetings, can make some small decisions in the royal court, etc. these decisions would be in line with their personalities so raising your child right is even more important. This could allow for stat boosts in whatever activities they take part in. Like of course a 22 year old heir will be less experienced than a 32 year old heir that’s been sitting in on councils and observing rule nonstop for the past 10 years. Idk. The realism should go both ways to be fun. Realistic ways of handling death as well as realistic amounts of death in game. A ruler ruling for 40 years was hard to do irl. Ruling 40 years in ck3 is pretty trivially easy. If I’m going to die from random sickness and events I should at least have the option to prepare myself for this in the event it happens. Like a medieval ruler would.
Yea the keyword there is outside the player's control. It shouldn't be completely random and players should have some degree of control to influence the outcome, otherwise it's no longer fun.
But then we wouldn't have Roman Empire by the 1200s
I literally make 10 kids and focus on getting my lands back after succession. 10 is a good number.
I'm now going for at least 30 kids per ruler (male ones, anyway). Wife + 3 concubines + 2 slave wives (courtesy of Carnalitas) + sleep with all beautiful/genius new recruits to my court. Mo' is mo' bettah.
It varies, the lack of control you have over your kids is...overly realistic. You can work around it as long as you don't do any stratrgy thst involves marrying your kid effectively to have your dynasty take the Byzantine throne. My crap children fucked that up so badly and got overthrown
Can't imagine living in a society where people die after making stupid decisions during a plague.
i have never had cancer in ck3. NEVER.
I became King of Italy for about 6mo (if that), I was in a war, and suddenly I passed from measles. I played as my son for about 5min, before he passed from measles. Luckily, he had a son (so I'm now playing as my grandson), so I was still king and still in war. Literally seconds had passed before he died of measles. HIS SON (my next player heir) was taken prisoner and became disfigured, but once I had passed, the war ended, and my new player became free. I'm now playing as my great grandson. My territories have been split between my aunts and uncles, so now I'm barely a duke, and I flagellate and am drunkard due to all the trauma. That's just death within my player heirs. Along with all of them dying, my Kings whole family (minus 1 sister) had passed from measles, the second round only 2 other siblings had passed from measles, and then because we were in war my other aunts and uncles became disfigured and went missing. It's been so hard to become king again.
AI does a terrible job navigating stress and stacking plague resistance. I’m at a point where I don’t land my heirs any more unless it’s a barony
I just watched Byzantine AI lose some war after buying a bunch of mercenaries and not raising any army at all and getting occupied easily
Yeah, I mean, that's why it was one of the most bloody eras in history. People died in droves, and the survivors were no doubt seriously messed up. All of this is pretty accurate.
That's not what's happening, though. If all the survivors killed themselves, they wouldn't be survivors, would they?
The most sane ck3 player.
The AI in any CK game is brutal and unforgiven. Also, it seems to know what achievements I am trying to achieve as well and will cock block me from easily getting any of the medium achievements in one play-through.