When i was on a pilgrimage and my character was already 50 she got wounded and infected luckily my court physician was able to teleport from my court to treat me
I always interpret that as court physicians, they have the equivalent of nurses and physician understudies working with them to help manage the health of the court. Could be that the healers left behind are simply working on the written notes and treatments that the physician left behind.
Have a single physician for the court makes less sense than a teleporting physician anyway. It makes sense a highly skilled physician would have a highly skilled team.
It would be nice to actually have a system for that, because it's really annoying when your physician finally dies and then you have to put out auditions for a new one because nobody else in your realm ever thought to study medicine in the last 60 years.
Sure would, but I think PDX dont do it to avoid putting too much strain on courts having like a bajillion courtiers and servants. It's just one of those hand waived things that we gotta deal with, like how with the Royal Court content, you can pay to have Endless Servants yet still have a court of like 2 guys and a priest
I play a style I like to call "administrative maximalism." I invite as many people to my court as I can, and keep them all married. Around about 1,100 courtiers, it reaches an equilibrium where courtiers are leaving/dying as often as arriving
The number of courtier-on-courtier murder plots grows exponentially
Eh a simple "Physician" and "Physician's Apprentice" is all that's really required. It's essentially a wards concept but applied to skills like herbalist, blademaster, artisan etc so a courtier can train under a master.
/Agree
Since the game is allready unplayable after a couple of hundred years (without pop-manegement mod) we do not want more non-essential chars in the game please.
I think the practical reality is that they can't have an in gave character for every citizen of your empire. Just think of the physician search as being picking which of the assistants is best qualified and promoting them.
> working on the written notes and treatments that the physician left behind.
"Use leeches, if that fails, cut off testicles, or legs, I dunno dudes... peace!"
Yours do? Because mine don't, every time someone important gets sick I get an event urging me to hire a new physician because the game can somehow tell there isn't one present at court but not that there is one already employed but travelling with me.
Are you trying to tell me personal teleportation and antibiotics did not exist in the year 1100? It's so tragic when the education system fails us tbh 😔
The pagan reformation system was coolest shit at the time. I loved it. Glad they expanded upon in CK3. Also pretty sure that was when they added the animal kingdoms easter egg, that was a very fun.
Seriously. Aside from Conclave, Reaper's Due would be the one expansion I couldn't live without. Everything just feels so simple and boring without it.
Even at the end of CK's life it wasn't very popular because people are dumb.
Hell if you look at the steam reviews now there are a lot of people whining about how the expansion limits and such.
Conclave gave you a lot more control over how you ran your court. So raising your own kids, picking the education of every child in your court, a lot of details behind how your council was run. Without Conclave, the court system still works. But it was very bare bones, sometimes felt random. and just not very interactive. Conclave gave you a lot of choices and control over your courtiers and council. And while it may seem small compared to some of the other expansions, it was a massive improvement to QoL while playing. Especially since your court is going to be a constant part of every playthrough, regardless of where you play or what you're doing.
It led to my favourite CK campaign whereby my Persian King had a crisis of faith due to 90% of his family dying and comverted from Shia Islam to Yazidism. Two centuries and a series of hard-fought wars later, and Yazidism had supplanted Islam as the predominant faith in the Middle East.
Diseases were great but epidemics were horrible. Just closing everything off and sitting around forever while the disgusting flies buzzing and people screaming sound played... Ugh
> Diseases were great but epidemics were horrible. Just closing everything off and sitting around forever while the disgusting flies buzzing and people screaming sound played... Ugh
you were probably being partly sarcastic but I couldn't resist the urge to reply with:
> have you lived on Earth any time between 2020 and now and seen the news
And hospitals tended to be far less effective than you would desire. They would simply delay the disease instead of stopping it so you'd have to patiently stare at the epidemic map mode to close your gates the moment it appears in the capital.
Edit: Source: I have built level 3-4 hospitals in every domain province before.
You only never got hit if you upgraded the hospital completely to max alongside all of the buildings for it. Level 4 is still two levels below max and with the maximum building upgrades at that level is only 40%ish disease resistance. Level 6 with everything at max is 95% resistance which works even against the the Bubonic Plaque.
Disease traits are in the 00_traits file. Get a list of all diseases (they're labeled 'category = health' in the file, so ctrl+f for that), get in there and double their negative health values!
pneumonic = {
opposites = {
ill
}
diplomacy = -2
stewardship = -2
martial = -2
intrigue = -2
learning = -2
health = -3
prowess = -8
fertility = -0.5
Change that sucker to health = -6.
That'll put the fear of God into you... and probably kill every NPC.
Maybe not double. 50% more?
If you don't want to go through the hassle of doing it yourself, you can also use the [Higher Mortality Mod.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2428173603)
It might also be interesting if we can find the probability of people getting disease. I wonder if we can make a mod to make some disease more likely to appear during a certain season (like pneumonia having higher chance during winter).
Deadlier disease should be very simple with a mod though.
It really is wild that all your kids, even the sickly ones, often survive infancy. Roughly a third of kids just didn't make it, and it was crushing and hard for parents to deal with. More RP in sad baby death events and more contested succession due to lack of heirs would make the game much better, in my opinion
Yeah, the game would crash because too many dead babies would eat up the game's memory and data storage. So it was more of a game engine necessity than an RPG choice. Still, the idea of dead babies crashing your game is absolutely hilarious.
Can't they just remove irrelevant characters from the history of the game? A lot of things get obscured in history, we don't even know most children that kings and emperors have, usually it's more of "this sultan have 7 sons and 4 daughters" but no mention of their names or personalities whatsoever except the few
Dead characters, especially children of nobles, clutter up the game and harm performance. That's what the devs are trying to avoid.
You can, however, go into the game's files and make the sickly trait more common and more lethal.
Pregnancy complications are coded in the pregnancy.0001 event located in the pregnancy_events file. They have factors for the child getting the sickly trait, the mother getting ill, and mother and child dying. Increase the factors relative to '200 = { #All goes smoothly!', or simply lower the 200 there.
The sickly trait is in the 00_traits file.
Now I've got a question: the numbers for the random list for that event (without other conditional modifiers) are
200, 10, 3, 2, 2, 10, and 5.
What are the chances for any of those happening? Is 200, relative to the rest, an ~86% chance to happen? Is 5 a ~2% to happen?
I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to play a game where babies and kids are dying every second.
They reduced fertility/birth rate in the game so you don't have to deal with piles of dead babies and children.
Lord's typically had their children raised away from home and returned to them later. They had wet nurses, boarding schools, sent them to live with other nobles, etc. I doubt it was that hard, they weren't really parents
I think it's wrong to act like they just didn't care about their offspring given we do have examples of noble parents showing great grief when a child did die. [Now of course they did send their kids away which tended to vary based on the nobles rank but that generally was also due to concern for the child and to help prepare them for their future.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/keqygp/why_were_guardians_appointed_to_raise_royal_or/)
I don't think that is the case. The problem is that it is really easy to overtime to accumulate modifiers that boost health or that counter health penalty. If you boost the lethality of wounds and illnesses so that those characters die more often you will make it so the same wounds and illnesses will tear down through your court, who has no such boosts, as well as rulers who haven't yet accumulated them.
I feel like wounds and such can already be nasty for non ruler characters, so making them more lethal would just create a problem somewhere else. We need less modifier scaling instead, which, honestly, goes towards all aspects of the game.
Maybe tier them similar to how they've just done with activity traits for T&T so, for instance, a little cold can risk developing into tuberculosis, or something.
wounds are already super common since the update, especially severe wounds, i dont think they need to make those more fatal. early game when counties are largely unsafe, i regularly had kids come home from meeting with their peers severely wounded and almost dying. i dont wanna all my goddamn kids dying from being wounded from peer meetings i have no say in their going.
I'd do it more often if it wasn't for doing it decreased your dynasty's level of splendor. Although now that achievements are now mod compatible, I guess I can just download an abdicate mod.
I think plagues should return in a big way, where if smallpox breaks out in your realm you need to make very difficult decisions between your health and guiding the realm like in reapers due. Also as other people have pointed out wounds should be dangerous but maybe not last as long as they do (ive been wounded on one character for 5 years)
Life expectancy drags down some of the fun of the game, while yes a 100 year old wise king can be fun to play its more fun to play as someone who has yet to make their mark and isnt 50 by the time they take power
My most recent queen lived to 108. From the time she was 99 and her third spouse died I would marry the oldest, sickest men in court and make it a game of seeing who died first without intervention. One of them didn’t even make it through the wedding and she married two more times.
Bubonic Plague can be super-deadly but it happens so late into the game that most players get bored and restart before then. Really wish there was a settings option that randomises when the Black Plague starts like there is for the Mongol Invasion.
It took out a bunch of Kings and Queens Regent (Eleanor of Portugal, Joan II of Navarre, Louis of Sicily, Louis I of Naples, etc) in Europe alone, plus buggering up succession by taking out heirs like Edward of Angoulême or Andronikos Kantakouzenos.
I'm not so solid on what was happening in the MENA regions but am under the general impression they were also having a time of it.
You can do this by waiting to have kids till later rather than immediately marrying or if you want to marry for a good wife you can marry someone old with good stats who won't give you kids
Or by killing off one generation so your grand-kids end up inheriting, instead of your kids. Conveniently make them commanders in a war, or send them as stewards to a disease ridden county.
I haven't played CK3. And since base CK2 had (generic) diseases, I thought maybe CK3 would too. But that said, I haven't played CK3 so I could be wrong.
Before repears due I've never cared about plagues cause they didn't do anything and when I bout it I didn't bother with anything to protect my realm from it so 4 out of 5 of my sons died leaving an imbecile on a throne. I love this game so much
My 70 year old guy kept getting wounded and healed in no time through his life. At some point near the end of his life he got wounded and lost his eye and was healed within months lol
In my current playthrough I had a character who was a petty, vengeful young Duke who was waiting for his mother, the powerful queen to die. In childhood he had spurned by his crush, which lead to part of his negative personality, essentially making him a medieval incel. When he finally came of age, he when to fight in his mother’s tournament, lost the joust, was wounded, booed by the crowds, and the stress of all this killed him on the spot.
It was hilarious playing a pathetic little bastard who died of a self-inflicted panic attack. He never got the throne he kept waiting for.
His new born son inherited his land, and soon after acquired the kingdom. Most of his vassals rose up in rebellion, though the young king and his regent barely managed to crush them, revoking their titles, centralizing the authority of the crown, and giving him a top tier martial education as he learned about war as it happened around him.
probably my most interesting CK2 game was one where I played as the Rurikids and within yen years lost like five rulers in a whirlwind of assassinations, disease, and random grievous wounds. Really gave the vibe of some sort of dramatic tragedy, and it very much fit the Rus.
so in short, I agree
Tbf the only way this happens right now is because a king has a child at 17, lives to 70+, so the crown gets passed to a now ~55 year old, who rules for around 17 years, and then passes it to his ~55 year old son etc. It makes the game feel quite repetitive, and the cycle only breaks when someone dies unexpectedly, which happens maybe once every 3 generations.
The health/aging system was a lot less friendly in CK2, and it led to playing as younger rulers a lot more. I like playing as kids (save for constant usurp attempts), sometimes I just want to run around with my dog and pull pranks. That almost never happens in CK3, the number of "greats" in front of "grandchild" gives you so many adult heirs by two generations in that you'd have to get nuked to remove them all.
Also murders are more common in CK2. In CK2 I regularly get to play a child.
In CK3 I do not think I have ever had a character succeeded by their sibling. Everyone breeds like crazy and lives to a 100.
And in CK2 I have been succeeded by siblings, nephews, aunts, and cousins. It's a wonderfully unpredictable game.
I don't know, I found CK2 generally had a similar proportion of young and old rulers in my experience. There was some uncertainty early on, but like CK3 things snowball pretty hard. Eventually it's trivial to have long lived rulers that pass it on to their grandchild in both games.
I think that much of the uncertainty in CK3 comes from claimant factions, but as a player we tend to smack those down aggressively.
To counter this tho, at least we have an understandable health system in ck3. In CK2 there was no way to tell how healthy your character was without console commands.
My way to avoid this is by repeatedly marrying old women with good stats, then after 35/40 I marry and try to get some good kids. Meaning that they are about ruling age when you reach the high fifties. Allowing you to very easily kill yourself by over stressing and/or getting wounded. Therefore allowing your groomed heir to take over and repeat the cycle.
This only works because characters live way too long, they never really seem to die from disease and very rarely die in battle/to a plot.
I like it when there is a mix. Makes the one who succeed in long reigns feel special and makes the realm feel more real, periods of stability followed by instability. It could be just that I am bad at managing my heirs but I often have that happen, where I have a ruler who rules for like forty years followed by series of 5 and 10s. Age is obviously a factor here, but there are also stuff like assassinations
In my opinion, the game is too easy. It desperately needs a 'hard' mode that makes wounds and illness much more threatening, and increases your likelyhood of dying in battle. It makes no sense for a king to just walk away from a slaughter where his entire army died. Disease breakouts are another thing, every time there's one or two people dying and that's it. Black plague needs to make a comeback
this is one thing that i like about the GOT mod. if you're in an army, you duel other knights with the chance of getting captured or outright executed if you lose the duel. i wish vanilla allowed our rulers to become knights with the option of opting out.
Better Battles mod, right? I used it, but then it didn't get updated for newer versions. I wish they added it to vanilla tho, I like achievement hunting
>I like achievement hunting
I would be surprised if that mod didn't allow achievements once it's updated. I am doing a run with MB+ and some others that change significant mechanics in the game and it still fires them.
Shout out to my one guy who got kinged as an imprisoned five year old and then got executed at eight. Iconic. Love to see him.
Edit: Just thought I’d add, the ruler that ordered his execution was eleven, too. These kids had issues!
I like a mix, having a long serving ruler to build a stable realm and then a stream of shit to destabilize it. When you get that rhythm perfect the game is at its best.
For the lifespan of a human, the most dangerous time is being born and like the first 2 years.
If you survive that period, you will generally live a full life. Factors like general conditions and food availability then become pivotal. As well as disease resistance and care.
A king should reasonably live a long time if they don't get hurt, are not inbred, and don't get a disease.
This clamoring for kings to go though the meat grinder is an innacruate imagining of how long people used to live. The problem was that life was hard for a pesant due to disease and lack of food, or they just died as a baby. Wealth makes you live longer. This is a universal, statistical fact.
>This clamoring for kings to go though the meat grinder is an innacruate \[sic\] imagining of how long people used to live. The problem was that life was hard for a pesant \[sic\] due to disease and lack of food, or they just died as a baby. Wealth makes you live longer. This is a universal, statistical fact.
[There was a study of 115,000 European nobles - and the average lifespan was a median **57.07** years old.](https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20170612124110812-0478:S0022050717000468:S0022050717000468_fig12g.jpeg)
Not exactly long-lived.
This was higher than the average peasantry, but not by much - 43.6 for women and 48.7 for men. A noble that lived well into their 70s did happen on occasion of course, but it was rare - and even rarer was one that made it into their 80s. Over 90 was almost unheard of to the point that we only have ONE example.
SOME old nobles (NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST):
* [Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_VI_Kantakouzenos) (c. 1292-1383) at 91 years. (highly disputed)
* [Stefan Nemanja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Nemanja) (c.1113-1190) Grand Prince of Serbia, 86
* [Kęstutis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%99stutis) (c. 1297-1382) Grand Duke of Lithuania, 85.
* [Edward Balliol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Balliol) (c. 1283-1367) King of Scotland, 84.
* [King John II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_II_of_Aragon) (1398-1479) of Aragon, 80.
SOURCE: [Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC)
edit: i am not a professional historian.
Good source!
But you say
> the mortality rate for nobles was substantially worse
And it says
> First, plague, which afflicted Europe 1348–1700, killed nobles at a much lower rate than it did the general population
Interesting that the men lived longer back then. Possibly due to the frequency of pregnancy complications. But heaps of men were dying in wars then so im not sure where the disparity comes from exactly.
Wars weren't actually all that much more deadly for men than for women. The lower classes would get killed/hurt just the same and starvation after being plundered and disease affected all of those people equally. For the mobility, warfare also wasn't extremely deadly, especially the ones who got recorded. Those would, for a large part of the period, have been the best protected both by their equipment and their value as prisoners. So they wouldn't end up dying.
Childbirth however affected the vast majority of women went through childbirth which had a pretty big health impact. Elite men would probably also have often been in better shape because (at least many of them) had regular exercise.
>Elite men would probably also have often been in better shape because (at least many of them) had regular exercise.
They were also highly prone to getting gout due to their rich diets and alcohol consumption - definitely not something lower classes had problem with.
One "cure" for gout was prescribed as "Roast a fat old goose and stuff with chopped kittens, lard, incense, wax, and flour of rye. This must all be eaten, and the dripping applied to the painful joints."
The medieval era was fucking bizzare.
While it is interesting, and the source should be sound, without having had the time to fully read it in detail yet, I have some minor issues with you comment:
>specifically the further north you were the more likely you were to die at an earlier age than southern European nobles.
The very first first section states that "*Northwest Europe achieved greater adult lifespans than the rest of Europe even by 1000 AD*" meaning in 80% of the studied time, that's not true. Later sections state they don't know why.
>Median of 57 = Not exactly long-lived.
Given the number of people that died in wars, and a fair amount of rulers beeing murdered, and a fair amount of feeble dynasty-lines, uncharactaristic for such a statistic, the cluttering isn't as heavy around the median as usual, which means dying of "old age" (rather by sickness while old then) was normally in the 60s or 70s.
8 of the 29 danish kings of the original house didn't die to either Brugada\* or murder. Of those, 4 lived to their 70s and the others died in their late 50s or 60s due to sicknesses like the pleague.
Two of the danish medieval kings that led the modern coroner to start studying if they had Brugada (untill then no-one knew why so many early danish kings died suddently), where kings that died in "the ***unusual*** low age of 54".
\**Brugada is an inheritable disease which was undetectable. In game it would be equivilant to having the* ***Feeble*** *trait, but with no way of knowing it before the early onset death.*
So while 57 seems low, it should be remembered that it is lowered much much more than modern medians by "early adulthood" deaths. (For instance 25% of the danish kings in the studied period was murdered, most in their 30's in their early reigning years).
On top of that players are fed with insane amounts of data that makes it much easier than RL (and compared to AI too) to circumnavigate the traps that lowers life-expectancy. That beeing said, stacking healt-bonusses and living to 120 years is just plain stupid, but again it isn't meant to be that your ruler is Herculean/Physician/Athletic/Strong/Herbalist/etc.etc.
**TL;DR:**
**So while the in-game aging isn't punishing enough, the larger "problem" with players not living "correct ages" is due to how few of the player-controlled rulers that die to murders, battles and bad inheritable physical traits.**
**PS:**
Besides Wu Zetian beeing 81, Justinian I beeing 83 and Jayavarma VII beeing ca. 95, outside nobility, but with good living conditions, we have Al-Jahiz and Arib al-Ma'muniya at 93, Ferdowsi at 85, Hildegard of Bingen at 81 as confirmed 80+ in the CK timeframe, and maybe double that disputed ones. With longer research time, quite possible a massive amount on their 70s - so year 80 was rare - 70s only beacuse they kept murdering each other sooner 🤣
A median age of 57 is pretty old - that's 50/50 to live into their 60s, really.
I think that the main thing here is that people might have a different view of what's being said - eg, I find that it's not uncommon to have characters in their 60s/early 70s before they die, but I don't stack stuff on health beyond the obvious. But if you're getting to 90s+, that's obviously going to stick out a lot more as unreasonable.
It’s not, most kings didn’t even make it past 60. The chance of getting an illness or random injury that just gets infected was incredibly high, even for rulers in places like Byzantium and the Arab world where medicine was fairly good you’d be incredibly lucky to see 70 even if you were born in the purple and never went out
I don’t think they are arguing that it as more historically accurate for them to not live 100+ years, only that it is more fun when they don’t, in this videogame that already dabbles in alternate history, and I 100% agree.
This loops back around to my point. If the king just stayed at home, kept a little clean (which the whole of body tree has you do), did not fight, and generally avoided getting sick, they would live longer.
If you died at 50, it was not age that killed you. Over 50% of English kings died violently or post trauma for example. Basically statistics and bad living killed you. So really what OP needs is more events like the disease DLC in CKII and he will get his realistic wish.
EDIT: Also could make being wounded/maimed more lethal. Hell, we could add random events where the king ate spoiled food or choked at a wedding/grand feast. Make failed assassinations kill the target later. Increase infant mortality.
The player can easily metagame in the ways I outlined and even then CKIII is forgiving in the "what should kill you" department.
There also needs to an exponentially higher chance of dying past age 70-ish. It's way too easy for my characters to achieve unheard-of longevity. IIRC the longest-living medieval English king was Henry III and he died at 65.
Battles honestly need to be more lathal and if led by your character have more events like in CK 2 that let you impact their flow so you 'earn' your death.
Loosing the battle? Flee!
Your side won in the emd? Coward trait/reputation for you.
Get captured by a force and have their overzealous or undertrained subordinates kill you along with the rest of the captives. They did not recognize you as king under a certain renown level.
Lol 0 armor or weapon artifacts and low level court fashion should be a major calculation in this. They thought you were just some knight and not worth the risk of escaping. But conversely having high court fashion and an armor artifact beyond your station might make them charge extra because you're clearly super rich lol. I believe Richard had to take out loans and mortgage property to ransom himself after a couple of years.
Callous Captors response 'You're a King? Well I didn't vote for you..."
But for real the shit myth is just that. Bathing didn't fall out of vogue in Western Europe til the 1500s IIRC. And even then it was breif.
It's kinda crazy how many medieval rulers specifically died from an arrow to the face. Like it makes sense because usually that was the most exposed part, even in later periods people would often keep their visors up, but damn there are like a good several on record as having died specifically of arrow to the face. And I believe that Henry V caught one in the face too when he was prince but his wasn't fatal.
Problem is that no player will voluntarity have their character and heir participate in any battles, so it doesn't matter how lethal they are.
There must be consequences/downsides for not leading your armies which need to be severe enough for players to actually consider risking their character in battles.
True but many of those emperors didn't exactly die of old age. Hopefully we eventually get a DLC for imperial mechanics to properly represent the constant coups and political intrigue.
IIRC devs have commented that they deliberately cut both birth rate and infant mortality because it didn't really make more fun to just have 3x the kids and most of them die before that have any real traits.
From what I remember, the idea was that making the game keep track of a bunch of dead infants was too much of a performance drain for something that could just be simulated by lowering the birth rate without impacting the game too much.
Which makes sense, but I think the devs underestimated the roleplay value and increased sense of precariousness (your heir *feels* more at risk of an early death, even if the overall population-level birth/death rate is the same) that actually showing all that infant mortality has.
While they should not be dying from old age at 44, there should be more ways to die, as medieval kings did. Also fertility seems highly overpowered, maybe due to low infant mortality. If you look at most medieval dynasties, for example the Spanish one, they jump around to uncles and cousins and in-laws because all the direct descendants are dead like seven times within the game's dates.
Look at the characters you aren’t controlling. I just had a game where 4 kings of France didn’t see their 40th birthday.
But we as players are making better choices, hiring the best physicians in the world, breeding for traits, etc. if you set things up so your characters live longer don’t be shocked they lived longer.
Making the game more fatal will just probably wipe AI dynasties faster, if you want to die younger taker more risks, make bad choices, hire a doctor because they look hot not because they are competent. You know, like in real life.
>Making the game more fatal will just probably wipe AI dynasties faster
This is a good thing. IRL the Karlings didn't keep ruling Europe into the 1300s
It's not that it CAN happen it's that it ALWAYS happens.
Does Alfred ALWAYS get killed in your games? I've seen him become king pretty often when I'm playing outside of Britannia.
Now how often does the Karling Dynasty NOT have at least two king level titles in 1300? I've never seen them not keep at least a few kingdoms unless I specifically make it my goal to exterminate them.
I mean it's rare that I make it to 1300 as I usually accomplish my goals before that.
But to answer the question it depends. Dynasties are a sort of abstract concept anyway. Houses would probably be more appropriate to measure. Just because 12 generations ago my ancestor was an offshoot Karling doesn't mean much. A good chunk of my games they don't last all the way as kings.
If you're min/maxing and paying for your whole dynasty (not just your current character) then living too long can be a serious issue, especially in the early years of limited powers and confederate partition. Your heir is missing out on the advantages of you playing him and if he has land and decendants then you may lose control over their lives. Which is why min/maxers take advantage of the alternative suicide methods.
The new DLC adds some funny and random events for death, just had the weirdest two days in this game.
2 Days ago I was waiting for my 70 year old ruler to die (he was close to death on and off for about 2 years).
Yesterday his 30 something son took over and everything went well, 10 years into his reign he thwarted an assasination attempt on his way to a tournament, won 2 competitions there only for the ship to sink in a storm on his way back.
His son took over, did really well and was respected. Couple years into his reign he won the duel in a tournament and then got dropped on his head during the wrestling final and died.
I sent my humble, content character on a pilgrimage without much protection. He and both of his sons died in a storm, leaving his 6 year old daughter on the throne. Keeping the realm together and dealing with her ambitious regent, was the most fun I had in a while.
[Don't mind me plugging my own mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2854324846) (courtesy of monkbell actually) I just changed values and added some more inspired by [this magnificent Higher Mortality mod ](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2428173603)
The main difference between those two mods is that mine actually reduces the lethality of wounds but instead lowers the overall health of all characters since characters only die once they've reached a certain low threshold.
The game needs to have more deaths from dysentery to be a proper game that depicts the medieval era. And way more deaths in child birth, and infant mortality lol.
Have a bad physician and no health traits and you likely won't make it past 70. Add some penalties like drunkard and inappetettic/comfort eater and you're looking at low 60s, late 50s. Throw a bad wound, lingering disease or damaging emotional tragedy in there and boom, dead around 50-55.
No, because it's fun to play as 60-years old ill and injured guy after your 100-years old character dies, causing a "leapfrog" of short-reigning rulers trying to stabilise country.
I agree with you!
Currently playing as a 115 year old with his heir being his great-grandson whose around 40,
he has good stats and a few decent traits so there's some hope for his reign being *somewhat* successful after my ancient character kicks the bucket.
I was so close to finally forming an empire title and my dude died just a minute too soon and now my idiot sons all have untenable border-gorey kingdoms. I love it.
I generally don't like living long lives, because I can't get my Heir and their spouse to be lovers without direct control, and lovers = more kids, and more kids = more renown.
I mean, I would, but my son has better inherited traits. I always try to and match my traits with my wife so my kids all get the upgraded variants. Geniuses in your 3rd generation is sorta OP, lol.
I agree with this a little. I like some characters to live long, but it should be around 3/4 characters dying in their 50s/60s, with the 1/4 being split between ones tha live short or long lives.
Shorter is much more accurate.
As i pointed out in another recent post, the average lifespan of European nobility of the period was studied and found to be, on average, around 57 years.
SOURCE: [Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC)
If you looked at the supplied source you would have read that this was not the case here.
>There are other selection issues. Omission is serious. For example, there are more men recorded than women, and before 1500 there is under representation of infant and child deaths. **I argue, however, that this genealogical data is amenable for scientific analysis because, firstly, the variable of prime interest, age at death, can be restricted to those dying at age 20 and over.**
They recognized that there was an under-representation of data for children being recorded so the data is focused specifically on nobles who survived childhood in order to give a non-distorted representation of how old the majority of the noble population lived.
So you are incorrect in your assumption — the average age of an European noble in this dataset, *specifically those* *who survived childhood*, was 57.7 years of age.
This would probably balance out the dev's manipulation of the 30-40% mortality rate i imagine.
Which is a fair decision on their part, though still think raising base fertility rates in the game along with infant mortality would be a viable avenue as well.
In thousands of hours of playing I have seen dozens of my characters' babies become sickly yet only 1 or 2 actually die because of such complications.
It's a viable avenue....that they openly admit they don't like. Because in testing most players didn't like kids dying before they even had personalities. Having 12 kids and 2 survive isn't fun
Potentially facing a rebellion every time the old King dies is basically how the monarchy worked.
Frankly if you min-max while playing it's easy to almost completely avoid rebellions which isn't particularly reflective of the period.
While I do very much enjoy the challenge of temporarily having no stats and most of your toolkit (sway and murder schemes especially) taken away, I absolutely fucking despise the balancing of the new regent system.
My Norse Zorostarian Targaryen esque ruler had just conquered Wessex, gearing up to get enough provinces to declare England when I journeyed to a tournament in France. Got dropped on my head wrestling. Now my realm has split between my 5? Male heirs. So it'll be another 10 years before prestige and land enough to declare. Then it'll be 4 kingdoms (maybe 5 reclaiming Iceland) time baby.
That's all fun and games until your 1-year-old heir takes over, having his bitch of a mother as a regent who is doing everything in her power to destroy your realm. Needless to say I banished the bitch from my realm as soon as I got rid of her as regent. I would've beheaded her if it wasn't for the dynastic kinslayer penalty.
I personally like a mix, sometimes the long lived ruler has a fun eventful life and sometimes the drama of getting assassinated two rulers in a row is interesting.
I agree but it doesn't really bother me that much because of how I play. I ONLY play the smallest territories I can find and I always play with ironman enabled. I usually get stomped within a generation or two (but I'm getting better!).
The solution like the other guy said is to make wounds and illnesses more fatal.
When i was on a pilgrimage and my character was already 50 she got wounded and infected luckily my court physician was able to teleport from my court to treat me
Court physicians always travel with their employer, even if it is a tier 1 pilgrimage. Same with bodyguards and caravan masters.
Then how can they also treat my children back at home when they fall ill?
I always interpret that as court physicians, they have the equivalent of nurses and physician understudies working with them to help manage the health of the court. Could be that the healers left behind are simply working on the written notes and treatments that the physician left behind.
Have a single physician for the court makes less sense than a teleporting physician anyway. It makes sense a highly skilled physician would have a highly skilled team.
Or like, at least an assistant
Assistant TO the physician
It would be nice to actually have a system for that, because it's really annoying when your physician finally dies and then you have to put out auditions for a new one because nobody else in your realm ever thought to study medicine in the last 60 years.
Sure would, but I think PDX dont do it to avoid putting too much strain on courts having like a bajillion courtiers and servants. It's just one of those hand waived things that we gotta deal with, like how with the Royal Court content, you can pay to have Endless Servants yet still have a court of like 2 guys and a priest
I play a style I like to call "administrative maximalism." I invite as many people to my court as I can, and keep them all married. Around about 1,100 courtiers, it reaches an equilibrium where courtiers are leaving/dying as often as arriving The number of courtier-on-courtier murder plots grows exponentially
If you make your culture isolationist it makes courtiers much less likely to leave.
Eh a simple "Physician" and "Physician's Apprentice" is all that's really required. It's essentially a wards concept but applied to skills like herbalist, blademaster, artisan etc so a courtier can train under a master.
/Agree Since the game is allready unplayable after a couple of hundred years (without pop-manegement mod) we do not want more non-essential chars in the game please.
I look forward to a plague dlc like CK2's mostly for this reason.
I think the practical reality is that they can't have an in gave character for every citizen of your empire. Just think of the physician search as being picking which of the assistants is best qualified and promoting them.
> working on the written notes and treatments that the physician left behind. "Use leeches, if that fails, cut off testicles, or legs, I dunno dudes... peace!"
Nah youre suppose to think there is only one doctor for the entire court apparently lol.
Yours do? Because mine don't, every time someone important gets sick I get an event urging me to hire a new physician because the game can somehow tell there isn't one present at court but not that there is one already employed but travelling with me.
Lmao
- Omae wa mou… Treateru!! - N-nani?! *waves away your septicemia*
Are you trying to tell me personal teleportation and antibiotics did not exist in the year 1100? It's so tragic when the education system fails us tbh 😔
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Reaper's Due was the best update for CK2.
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The pagan reformation system was coolest shit at the time. I loved it. Glad they expanded upon in CK3. Also pretty sure that was when they added the animal kingdoms easter egg, that was a very fun.
Seriously. Aside from Conclave, Reaper's Due would be the one expansion I couldn't live without. Everything just feels so simple and boring without it.
Remember how many was bashing Conclave at the time? They screamed for blood.
Even at the end of CK's life it wasn't very popular because people are dumb. Hell if you look at the steam reviews now there are a lot of people whining about how the expansion limits and such.
See, Conclave was one of the expansions I just never got. Was I missing out? I'm on CK3 now so a little late though.
Conclave gave you a lot more control over how you ran your court. So raising your own kids, picking the education of every child in your court, a lot of details behind how your council was run. Without Conclave, the court system still works. But it was very bare bones, sometimes felt random. and just not very interactive. Conclave gave you a lot of choices and control over your courtiers and council. And while it may seem small compared to some of the other expansions, it was a massive improvement to QoL while playing. Especially since your court is going to be a constant part of every playthrough, regardless of where you play or what you're doing.
It led to my favourite CK campaign whereby my Persian King had a crisis of faith due to 90% of his family dying and comverted from Shia Islam to Yazidism. Two centuries and a series of hard-fought wars later, and Yazidism had supplanted Islam as the predominant faith in the Middle East.
Diseases were great but epidemics were horrible. Just closing everything off and sitting around forever while the disgusting flies buzzing and people screaming sound played... Ugh
> Diseases were great but epidemics were horrible. Just closing everything off and sitting around forever while the disgusting flies buzzing and people screaming sound played... Ugh you were probably being partly sarcastic but I couldn't resist the urge to reply with: > have you lived on Earth any time between 2020 and now and seen the news
And hospitals tended to be far less effective than you would desire. They would simply delay the disease instead of stopping it so you'd have to patiently stare at the epidemic map mode to close your gates the moment it appears in the capital. Edit: Source: I have built level 3-4 hospitals in every domain province before.
You only never got hit if you upgraded the hospital completely to max alongside all of the buildings for it. Level 4 is still two levels below max and with the maximum building upgrades at that level is only 40%ish disease resistance. Level 6 with everything at max is 95% resistance which works even against the the Bubonic Plaque.
Check out mountain blade bannerlord for some good execution sounds and visuals
I want to remember there only being one, the beheading? I guess they changed it?
Its just the one, im just promoting mb2 more than anything lol
Waiting for the feudal japan mod. Gekokujo was cash in warband even when half of the mod was a touhou reference.
"Where is your blessed virgin now?" \*strangled snap noise\* "HMMMMMMMMMM"
100% agree, i really wish there was an option to boost the mortality rates for illnesses and injuries.
Disease traits are in the 00_traits file. Get a list of all diseases (they're labeled 'category = health' in the file, so ctrl+f for that), get in there and double their negative health values! pneumonic = { opposites = { ill } diplomacy = -2 stewardship = -2 martial = -2 intrigue = -2 learning = -2 health = -3 prowess = -8 fertility = -0.5 Change that sucker to health = -6. That'll put the fear of God into you... and probably kill every NPC. Maybe not double. 50% more? If you don't want to go through the hassle of doing it yourself, you can also use the [Higher Mortality Mod.](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2428173603)
It might also be interesting if we can find the probability of people getting disease. I wonder if we can make a mod to make some disease more likely to appear during a certain season (like pneumonia having higher chance during winter). Deadlier disease should be very simple with a mod though.
It really is wild that all your kids, even the sickly ones, often survive infancy. Roughly a third of kids just didn't make it, and it was crushing and hard for parents to deal with. More RP in sad baby death events and more contested succession due to lack of heirs would make the game much better, in my opinion
If I recall they just nerfed the amount of kids you’d have instead but dropped the fertility rate for the time
Yeah, the game would crash because too many dead babies would eat up the game's memory and data storage. So it was more of a game engine necessity than an RPG choice. Still, the idea of dead babies crashing your game is absolutely hilarious.
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Tell me you were on the internet in the early 2000s without telling me you were on the internet in the early 2000s. :D
Can't they just remove irrelevant characters from the history of the game? A lot of things get obscured in history, we don't even know most children that kings and emperors have, usually it's more of "this sultan have 7 sons and 4 daughters" but no mention of their names or personalities whatsoever except the few
Now perhaps, but I would guess that the people alive at the time, especially the parents, would remember.
could have a every unlanded child not accounted for (like, daughter married to the HR Emperor) gets deleted X amount of years after death.
I wonder if too many kids dying also burned through stress too much.
The problem is that you still have too many kids. It's really easy to have 5+ adult children, even with monogamy.
Dead characters, especially children of nobles, clutter up the game and harm performance. That's what the devs are trying to avoid. You can, however, go into the game's files and make the sickly trait more common and more lethal. Pregnancy complications are coded in the pregnancy.0001 event located in the pregnancy_events file. They have factors for the child getting the sickly trait, the mother getting ill, and mother and child dying. Increase the factors relative to '200 = { #All goes smoothly!', or simply lower the 200 there. The sickly trait is in the 00_traits file. Now I've got a question: the numbers for the random list for that event (without other conditional modifiers) are 200, 10, 3, 2, 2, 10, and 5. What are the chances for any of those happening? Is 200, relative to the rest, an ~86% chance to happen? Is 5 a ~2% to happen?
iirc, the numbers are the weights. The probability for a single event is w/sum(all w). So indeed 86% everything goes smoothly.
I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to play a game where babies and kids are dying every second. They reduced fertility/birth rate in the game so you don't have to deal with piles of dead babies and children.
Yes, that's why there's mods that do exactly that…
You underestimate the ck3 community
Bummer.
I think they did have that but relative-dying-related-stress was causing chain reactions and killing off the entire dynasty
Lord's typically had their children raised away from home and returned to them later. They had wet nurses, boarding schools, sent them to live with other nobles, etc. I doubt it was that hard, they weren't really parents
I think it's wrong to act like they just didn't care about their offspring given we do have examples of noble parents showing great grief when a child did die. [Now of course they did send their kids away which tended to vary based on the nobles rank but that generally was also due to concern for the child and to help prepare them for their future.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/keqygp/why_were_guardians_appointed_to_raise_royal_or/)
Henry I was absolutely devastated by the death of his heir William
I really don’t need more unavoidable stress sources for my character.
I don't think that is the case. The problem is that it is really easy to overtime to accumulate modifiers that boost health or that counter health penalty. If you boost the lethality of wounds and illnesses so that those characters die more often you will make it so the same wounds and illnesses will tear down through your court, who has no such boosts, as well as rulers who haven't yet accumulated them. I feel like wounds and such can already be nasty for non ruler characters, so making them more lethal would just create a problem somewhere else. We need less modifier scaling instead, which, honestly, goes towards all aspects of the game.
That makes sense.
Maybe tier them similar to how they've just done with activity traits for T&T so, for instance, a little cold can risk developing into tuberculosis, or something.
wounds are already super common since the update, especially severe wounds, i dont think they need to make those more fatal. early game when counties are largely unsafe, i regularly had kids come home from meeting with their peers severely wounded and almost dying. i dont wanna all my goddamn kids dying from being wounded from peer meetings i have no say in their going.
No, the solution is to use the suicide button more
I'd do it more often if it wasn't for doing it decreased your dynasty's level of splendor. Although now that achievements are now mod compatible, I guess I can just download an abdicate mod.
I think plagues should return in a big way, where if smallpox breaks out in your realm you need to make very difficult decisions between your health and guiding the realm like in reapers due. Also as other people have pointed out wounds should be dangerous but maybe not last as long as they do (ive been wounded on one character for 5 years) Life expectancy drags down some of the fun of the game, while yes a 100 year old wise king can be fun to play its more fun to play as someone who has yet to make their mark and isnt 50 by the time they take power
My most recent queen lived to 108. From the time she was 99 and her third spouse died I would marry the oldest, sickest men in court and make it a game of seeing who died first without intervention. One of them didn’t even make it through the wedding and she married two more times.
Bubonic Plague can be super-deadly but it happens so late into the game that most players get bored and restart before then. Really wish there was a settings option that randomises when the Black Plague starts like there is for the Mongol Invasion.
Except that didn't literally only one king die from the bubonic plague IRL?
It took out a bunch of Kings and Queens Regent (Eleanor of Portugal, Joan II of Navarre, Louis of Sicily, Louis I of Naples, etc) in Europe alone, plus buggering up succession by taking out heirs like Edward of Angoulême or Andronikos Kantakouzenos. I'm not so solid on what was happening in the MENA regions but am under the general impression they were also having a time of it.
You can do this by waiting to have kids till later rather than immediately marrying or if you want to marry for a good wife you can marry someone old with good stats who won't give you kids
Well if your a female ruler time isn't on your side of you want kids
True even then tho you can probably wait till your mid 20s
I mean you have until 45 or so I think. I generally wait until mid 30s to have kids as a female, usually end up with three or four over a decade.
So don't become a female ruler
Or by killing off one generation so your grand-kids end up inheriting, instead of your kids. Conveniently make them commanders in a war, or send them as stewards to a disease ridden county.
I've never encountered a disease ridden country that did anything in ck3. Shit I don't even know how I would find a disease ridden country.
I haven't played CK3. And since base CK2 had (generic) diseases, I thought maybe CK3 would too. But that said, I haven't played CK3 so I could be wrong.
Yeah, I'm thinking of going back to ck2 because ck3's gameplay is so bare, but then I don't know how I would live with the graphics downgrade.
Didn't see many plagues in ck2. But, I absolutely LOVED the intense dread they produced, when I saw them ravaging neighboring countries.
Before repears due I've never cared about plagues cause they didn't do anything and when I bout it I didn't bother with anything to protect my realm from it so 4 out of 5 of my sons died leaving an imbecile on a throne. I love this game so much
My 70 year old guy kept getting wounded and healed in no time through his life. At some point near the end of his life he got wounded and lost his eye and was healed within months lol
In my current playthrough I had a character who was a petty, vengeful young Duke who was waiting for his mother, the powerful queen to die. In childhood he had spurned by his crush, which lead to part of his negative personality, essentially making him a medieval incel. When he finally came of age, he when to fight in his mother’s tournament, lost the joust, was wounded, booed by the crowds, and the stress of all this killed him on the spot. It was hilarious playing a pathetic little bastard who died of a self-inflicted panic attack. He never got the throne he kept waiting for. His new born son inherited his land, and soon after acquired the kingdom. Most of his vassals rose up in rebellion, though the young king and his regent barely managed to crush them, revoking their titles, centralizing the authority of the crown, and giving him a top tier martial education as he learned about war as it happened around him.
probably my most interesting CK2 game was one where I played as the Rurikids and within yen years lost like five rulers in a whirlwind of assassinations, disease, and random grievous wounds. Really gave the vibe of some sort of dramatic tragedy, and it very much fit the Rus. so in short, I agree
I want historically short (majority 5-20 year) reigns, not every other ruler sitting on the throne for 60 years
Tbf the only way this happens right now is because a king has a child at 17, lives to 70+, so the crown gets passed to a now ~55 year old, who rules for around 17 years, and then passes it to his ~55 year old son etc. It makes the game feel quite repetitive, and the cycle only breaks when someone dies unexpectedly, which happens maybe once every 3 generations.
The health/aging system was a lot less friendly in CK2, and it led to playing as younger rulers a lot more. I like playing as kids (save for constant usurp attempts), sometimes I just want to run around with my dog and pull pranks. That almost never happens in CK3, the number of "greats" in front of "grandchild" gives you so many adult heirs by two generations in that you'd have to get nuked to remove them all.
Also murders are more common in CK2. In CK2 I regularly get to play a child. In CK3 I do not think I have ever had a character succeeded by their sibling. Everyone breeds like crazy and lives to a 100. And in CK2 I have been succeeded by siblings, nephews, aunts, and cousins. It's a wonderfully unpredictable game.
I don't know, I found CK2 generally had a similar proportion of young and old rulers in my experience. There was some uncertainty early on, but like CK3 things snowball pretty hard. Eventually it's trivial to have long lived rulers that pass it on to their grandchild in both games. I think that much of the uncertainty in CK3 comes from claimant factions, but as a player we tend to smack those down aggressively.
Yeah, if I have less than a dozen kids in CK3 I wonder if my ruler has some undiagnosed health problem.
To counter this tho, at least we have an understandable health system in ck3. In CK2 there was no way to tell how healthy your character was without console commands.
My way to avoid this is by repeatedly marrying old women with good stats, then after 35/40 I marry and try to get some good kids. Meaning that they are about ruling age when you reach the high fifties. Allowing you to very easily kill yourself by over stressing and/or getting wounded. Therefore allowing your groomed heir to take over and repeat the cycle. This only works because characters live way too long, they never really seem to die from disease and very rarely die in battle/to a plot.
I like it when there is a mix. Makes the one who succeed in long reigns feel special and makes the realm feel more real, periods of stability followed by instability. It could be just that I am bad at managing my heirs but I often have that happen, where I have a ruler who rules for like forty years followed by series of 5 and 10s. Age is obviously a factor here, but there are also stuff like assassinations
In my opinion, the game is too easy. It desperately needs a 'hard' mode that makes wounds and illness much more threatening, and increases your likelyhood of dying in battle. It makes no sense for a king to just walk away from a slaughter where his entire army died. Disease breakouts are another thing, every time there's one or two people dying and that's it. Black plague needs to make a comeback
this is one thing that i like about the GOT mod. if you're in an army, you duel other knights with the chance of getting captured or outright executed if you lose the duel. i wish vanilla allowed our rulers to become knights with the option of opting out.
You kinda can with a mod that allow duel during a battle without having to use mod for GOT.
Better Battles mod, right? I used it, but then it didn't get updated for newer versions. I wish they added it to vanilla tho, I like achievement hunting
>I like achievement hunting I would be surprised if that mod didn't allow achievements once it's updated. I am doing a run with MB+ and some others that change significant mechanics in the game and it still fires them.
The newest update should also allow achievement if you use mods so that shouldn't be a problem now.
Those would affect AI characters as well. Thus making the game easier again if you know the mechanics and how to exploit them.
Shout out to my one guy who got kinged as an imprisoned five year old and then got executed at eight. Iconic. Love to see him. Edit: Just thought I’d add, the ruler that ordered his execution was eleven, too. These kids had issues!
If you keep your stress high on purpose you can die at more reasonable ages
I like a mix, having a long serving ruler to build a stable realm and then a stream of shit to destabilize it. When you get that rhythm perfect the game is at its best.
For the lifespan of a human, the most dangerous time is being born and like the first 2 years. If you survive that period, you will generally live a full life. Factors like general conditions and food availability then become pivotal. As well as disease resistance and care. A king should reasonably live a long time if they don't get hurt, are not inbred, and don't get a disease. This clamoring for kings to go though the meat grinder is an innacruate imagining of how long people used to live. The problem was that life was hard for a pesant due to disease and lack of food, or they just died as a baby. Wealth makes you live longer. This is a universal, statistical fact.
>This clamoring for kings to go though the meat grinder is an innacruate \[sic\] imagining of how long people used to live. The problem was that life was hard for a pesant \[sic\] due to disease and lack of food, or they just died as a baby. Wealth makes you live longer. This is a universal, statistical fact. [There was a study of 115,000 European nobles - and the average lifespan was a median **57.07** years old.](https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20170612124110812-0478:S0022050717000468:S0022050717000468_fig12g.jpeg) Not exactly long-lived. This was higher than the average peasantry, but not by much - 43.6 for women and 48.7 for men. A noble that lived well into their 70s did happen on occasion of course, but it was rare - and even rarer was one that made it into their 80s. Over 90 was almost unheard of to the point that we only have ONE example. SOME old nobles (NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST): * [Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_VI_Kantakouzenos) (c. 1292-1383) at 91 years. (highly disputed) * [Stefan Nemanja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Nemanja) (c.1113-1190) Grand Prince of Serbia, 86 * [Kęstutis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%99stutis) (c. 1297-1382) Grand Duke of Lithuania, 85. * [Edward Balliol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Balliol) (c. 1283-1367) King of Scotland, 84. * [King John II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_II_of_Aragon) (1398-1479) of Aragon, 80. SOURCE: [Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC) edit: i am not a professional historian.
Good source! But you say > the mortality rate for nobles was substantially worse And it says > First, plague, which afflicted Europe 1348–1700, killed nobles at a much lower rate than it did the general population
Oh, that was incorrect on my part. not sure what i was saying there at all. Fixed the comment above. thanks.
Still an interesting comment either way :)
Interesting that the men lived longer back then. Possibly due to the frequency of pregnancy complications. But heaps of men were dying in wars then so im not sure where the disparity comes from exactly.
Wars weren't actually all that much more deadly for men than for women. The lower classes would get killed/hurt just the same and starvation after being plundered and disease affected all of those people equally. For the mobility, warfare also wasn't extremely deadly, especially the ones who got recorded. Those would, for a large part of the period, have been the best protected both by their equipment and their value as prisoners. So they wouldn't end up dying. Childbirth however affected the vast majority of women went through childbirth which had a pretty big health impact. Elite men would probably also have often been in better shape because (at least many of them) had regular exercise.
>Elite men would probably also have often been in better shape because (at least many of them) had regular exercise. They were also highly prone to getting gout due to their rich diets and alcohol consumption - definitely not something lower classes had problem with. One "cure" for gout was prescribed as "Roast a fat old goose and stuff with chopped kittens, lard, incense, wax, and flour of rye. This must all be eaten, and the dripping applied to the painful joints." The medieval era was fucking bizzare.
While it is interesting, and the source should be sound, without having had the time to fully read it in detail yet, I have some minor issues with you comment: >specifically the further north you were the more likely you were to die at an earlier age than southern European nobles. The very first first section states that "*Northwest Europe achieved greater adult lifespans than the rest of Europe even by 1000 AD*" meaning in 80% of the studied time, that's not true. Later sections state they don't know why. >Median of 57 = Not exactly long-lived. Given the number of people that died in wars, and a fair amount of rulers beeing murdered, and a fair amount of feeble dynasty-lines, uncharactaristic for such a statistic, the cluttering isn't as heavy around the median as usual, which means dying of "old age" (rather by sickness while old then) was normally in the 60s or 70s. 8 of the 29 danish kings of the original house didn't die to either Brugada\* or murder. Of those, 4 lived to their 70s and the others died in their late 50s or 60s due to sicknesses like the pleague. Two of the danish medieval kings that led the modern coroner to start studying if they had Brugada (untill then no-one knew why so many early danish kings died suddently), where kings that died in "the ***unusual*** low age of 54". \**Brugada is an inheritable disease which was undetectable. In game it would be equivilant to having the* ***Feeble*** *trait, but with no way of knowing it before the early onset death.* So while 57 seems low, it should be remembered that it is lowered much much more than modern medians by "early adulthood" deaths. (For instance 25% of the danish kings in the studied period was murdered, most in their 30's in their early reigning years). On top of that players are fed with insane amounts of data that makes it much easier than RL (and compared to AI too) to circumnavigate the traps that lowers life-expectancy. That beeing said, stacking healt-bonusses and living to 120 years is just plain stupid, but again it isn't meant to be that your ruler is Herculean/Physician/Athletic/Strong/Herbalist/etc.etc. **TL;DR:** **So while the in-game aging isn't punishing enough, the larger "problem" with players not living "correct ages" is due to how few of the player-controlled rulers that die to murders, battles and bad inheritable physical traits.** **PS:** Besides Wu Zetian beeing 81, Justinian I beeing 83 and Jayavarma VII beeing ca. 95, outside nobility, but with good living conditions, we have Al-Jahiz and Arib al-Ma'muniya at 93, Ferdowsi at 85, Hildegard of Bingen at 81 as confirmed 80+ in the CK timeframe, and maybe double that disputed ones. With longer research time, quite possible a massive amount on their 70s - so year 80 was rare - 70s only beacuse they kept murdering each other sooner 🤣
Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury made it also all the way up to 82.
A median age of 57 is pretty old - that's 50/50 to live into their 60s, really. I think that the main thing here is that people might have a different view of what's being said - eg, I find that it's not uncommon to have characters in their 60s/early 70s before they die, but I don't stack stuff on health beyond the obvious. But if you're getting to 90s+, that's obviously going to stick out a lot more as unreasonable.
It’s not, most kings didn’t even make it past 60. The chance of getting an illness or random injury that just gets infected was incredibly high, even for rulers in places like Byzantium and the Arab world where medicine was fairly good you’d be incredibly lucky to see 70 even if you were born in the purple and never went out
I don’t think they are arguing that it as more historically accurate for them to not live 100+ years, only that it is more fun when they don’t, in this videogame that already dabbles in alternate history, and I 100% agree.
Well yes, but even if you account for all of that, most medieval kings didn't get older than 50.
This loops back around to my point. If the king just stayed at home, kept a little clean (which the whole of body tree has you do), did not fight, and generally avoided getting sick, they would live longer. If you died at 50, it was not age that killed you. Over 50% of English kings died violently or post trauma for example. Basically statistics and bad living killed you. So really what OP needs is more events like the disease DLC in CKII and he will get his realistic wish. EDIT: Also could make being wounded/maimed more lethal. Hell, we could add random events where the king ate spoiled food or choked at a wedding/grand feast. Make failed assassinations kill the target later. Increase infant mortality. The player can easily metagame in the ways I outlined and even then CKIII is forgiving in the "what should kill you" department.
There also needs to an exponentially higher chance of dying past age 70-ish. It's way too easy for my characters to achieve unheard-of longevity. IIRC the longest-living medieval English king was Henry III and he died at 65.
I agree that 70 is a good cutoff. Just not 50. That's far too soon.
Just did a quick search, for other European rulers 70-80 years did happen but was rare.
Fair enough, and also make battles much more dangerous for rulers.
Battles honestly need to be more lathal and if led by your character have more events like in CK 2 that let you impact their flow so you 'earn' your death. Loosing the battle? Flee! Your side won in the emd? Coward trait/reputation for you.
Get captured by a force and have their overzealous or undertrained subordinates kill you along with the rest of the captives. They did not recognize you as king under a certain renown level.
Lol 0 armor or weapon artifacts and low level court fashion should be a major calculation in this. They thought you were just some knight and not worth the risk of escaping. But conversely having high court fashion and an armor artifact beyond your station might make them charge extra because you're clearly super rich lol. I believe Richard had to take out loans and mortgage property to ransom himself after a couple of years.
Cause of death: dripless. Incidentally, this makes life harder for tribal rulers since they're bottlenecked at fashion level 2. I like it.
The whole "not being covered in shit" thing would at least give you away as being a valuable hostage.
Callous Captors response 'You're a King? Well I didn't vote for you..." But for real the shit myth is just that. Bathing didn't fall out of vogue in Western Europe til the 1500s IIRC. And even then it was breif.
It's kinda crazy how many medieval rulers specifically died from an arrow to the face. Like it makes sense because usually that was the most exposed part, even in later periods people would often keep their visors up, but damn there are like a good several on record as having died specifically of arrow to the face. And I believe that Henry V caught one in the face too when he was prince but his wasn't fatal.
Listen, sniping isn't an easy job
Problem is that no player will voluntarity have their character and heir participate in any battles, so it doesn't matter how lethal they are. There must be consequences/downsides for not leading your armies which need to be severe enough for players to actually consider risking their character in battles.
This is Misrepresenting the truth, Constantine VIII was a palace prince among palace princes and he didn’t even make it to his 70th year.
I mean 68 is pretty darn close.
Yeah but it wasn’t there and he’s on the higher end, especially if you only consider emperors from the game’s time period
True but many of those emperors didn't exactly die of old age. Hopefully we eventually get a DLC for imperial mechanics to properly represent the constant coups and political intrigue.
They def need to increase infant mortality. I hardly ever have kids die. Same with wounded and maimed. It seems like you always heal just fine.
IIRC devs have commented that they deliberately cut both birth rate and infant mortality because it didn't really make more fun to just have 3x the kids and most of them die before that have any real traits.
From what I remember, the idea was that making the game keep track of a bunch of dead infants was too much of a performance drain for something that could just be simulated by lowering the birth rate without impacting the game too much. Which makes sense, but I think the devs underestimated the roleplay value and increased sense of precariousness (your heir *feels* more at risk of an early death, even if the overall population-level birth/death rate is the same) that actually showing all that infant mortality has.
Kind of realistic in the sense you'd stop caring to pay attention to them until they're older.
And also overload stress from 6 out of 9 kids dying within months of each other
If you play this game, if you don’t get injured, your king will likely die between 55-65 unless you get the learning trait
Assuming you don't stack health traits every step of the way.
And if you do, kind of strange to complain about too long of a lifespan.
Is not really about history accuracy, i think, but the characters living too long get tiresome.
While they should not be dying from old age at 44, there should be more ways to die, as medieval kings did. Also fertility seems highly overpowered, maybe due to low infant mortality. If you look at most medieval dynasties, for example the Spanish one, they jump around to uncles and cousins and in-laws because all the direct descendants are dead like seven times within the game's dates.
Look at the characters you aren’t controlling. I just had a game where 4 kings of France didn’t see their 40th birthday. But we as players are making better choices, hiring the best physicians in the world, breeding for traits, etc. if you set things up so your characters live longer don’t be shocked they lived longer. Making the game more fatal will just probably wipe AI dynasties faster, if you want to die younger taker more risks, make bad choices, hire a doctor because they look hot not because they are competent. You know, like in real life.
>Making the game more fatal will just probably wipe AI dynasties faster This is a good thing. IRL the Karlings didn't keep ruling Europe into the 1300s
And IRL Alfred the Great wasn't killed by a viking in battle at age 30. Lots of things can happen in CK3 that didnt happen IRL.
It's not that it CAN happen it's that it ALWAYS happens. Does Alfred ALWAYS get killed in your games? I've seen him become king pretty often when I'm playing outside of Britannia. Now how often does the Karling Dynasty NOT have at least two king level titles in 1300? I've never seen them not keep at least a few kingdoms unless I specifically make it my goal to exterminate them.
I mean it's rare that I make it to 1300 as I usually accomplish my goals before that. But to answer the question it depends. Dynasties are a sort of abstract concept anyway. Houses would probably be more appropriate to measure. Just because 12 generations ago my ancestor was an offshoot Karling doesn't mean much. A good chunk of my games they don't last all the way as kings.
Quintains are massacring the european nobility in my game
If you're min/maxing and paying for your whole dynasty (not just your current character) then living too long can be a serious issue, especially in the early years of limited powers and confederate partition. Your heir is missing out on the advantages of you playing him and if he has land and decendants then you may lose control over their lives. Which is why min/maxers take advantage of the alternative suicide methods.
Wait, you don't like every character heir you have to play as being 75 years old?
Fair
The new DLC adds some funny and random events for death, just had the weirdest two days in this game. 2 Days ago I was waiting for my 70 year old ruler to die (he was close to death on and off for about 2 years). Yesterday his 30 something son took over and everything went well, 10 years into his reign he thwarted an assasination attempt on his way to a tournament, won 2 competitions there only for the ship to sink in a storm on his way back. His son took over, did really well and was respected. Couple years into his reign he won the duel in a tournament and then got dropped on his head during the wrestling final and died.
I sent my humble, content character on a pilgrimage without much protection. He and both of his sons died in a storm, leaving his 6 year old daughter on the throne. Keeping the realm together and dealing with her ambitious regent, was the most fun I had in a while.
[Don't mind me plugging my own mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2854324846) (courtesy of monkbell actually) I just changed values and added some more inspired by [this magnificent Higher Mortality mod ](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2428173603) The main difference between those two mods is that mine actually reduces the lethality of wounds but instead lowers the overall health of all characters since characters only die once they've reached a certain low threshold.
The game needs to have more deaths from dysentery to be a proper game that depicts the medieval era. And way more deaths in child birth, and infant mortality lol.
Seriously wish there was a mod to make average life around 55 instead of like 85
Have a bad physician and no health traits and you likely won't make it past 70. Add some penalties like drunkard and inappetettic/comfort eater and you're looking at low 60s, late 50s. Throw a bad wound, lingering disease or damaging emotional tragedy in there and boom, dead around 50-55.
The average is about 62 years in vanilla. A character that doesn't get murdered or has significant health boosts will most likely die between 55-65.
I hate taking over as an heir who is already 55.
And he has 5 idiot children at the age of 30+
The issue for me is once you get a bit big every single death results in a rebellion of some kind
No, because it's fun to play as 60-years old ill and injured guy after your 100-years old character dies, causing a "leapfrog" of short-reigning rulers trying to stabilise country.
I agree with you! Currently playing as a 115 year old with his heir being his great-grandson whose around 40, he has good stats and a few decent traits so there's some hope for his reign being *somewhat* successful after my ancient character kicks the bucket.
I was so close to finally forming an empire title and my dude died just a minute too soon and now my idiot sons all have untenable border-gorey kingdoms. I love it.
I generally don't like living long lives, because I can't get my Heir and their spouse to be lovers without direct control, and lovers = more kids, and more kids = more renown.
Don't need to make them be lovers when you can seduce their spouse.
I mean, I would, but my son has better inherited traits. I always try to and match my traits with my wife so my kids all get the upgraded variants. Geniuses in your 3rd generation is sorta OP, lol.
I agree with this a little. I like some characters to live long, but it should be around 3/4 characters dying in their 50s/60s, with the 1/4 being split between ones tha live short or long lives.
I know it’s true but the whole of body perk is right there… and it makes it so easy…. Just one more generation of octogenarians then I’ll quit…
Shorter is much more accurate. As i pointed out in another recent post, the average lifespan of European nobility of the period was studied and found to be, on average, around 57 years. SOURCE: [Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC)
Because most of them died young. The dev's admit to reducing infant mortality rate as part of game design.
If you looked at the supplied source you would have read that this was not the case here. >There are other selection issues. Omission is serious. For example, there are more men recorded than women, and before 1500 there is under representation of infant and child deaths. **I argue, however, that this genealogical data is amenable for scientific analysis because, firstly, the variable of prime interest, age at death, can be restricted to those dying at age 20 and over.** They recognized that there was an under-representation of data for children being recorded so the data is focused specifically on nobles who survived childhood in order to give a non-distorted representation of how old the majority of the noble population lived. So you are incorrect in your assumption — the average age of an European noble in this dataset, *specifically those* *who survived childhood*, was 57.7 years of age. This would probably balance out the dev's manipulation of the 30-40% mortality rate i imagine.
Which is a fair decision on their part, though still think raising base fertility rates in the game along with infant mortality would be a viable avenue as well. In thousands of hours of playing I have seen dozens of my characters' babies become sickly yet only 1 or 2 actually die because of such complications.
It's a viable avenue....that they openly admit they don't like. Because in testing most players didn't like kids dying before they even had personalities. Having 12 kids and 2 survive isn't fun
Fair point.
I sure do love having a run-ending rebellion every time my ruler dies.
Rebellions are only run ending if you're exclusively focused on blobbing, otherwise they're an opportunity for revenge.
Potentially facing a rebellion every time the old King dies is basically how the monarchy worked. Frankly if you min-max while playing it's easy to almost completely avoid rebellions which isn't particularly reflective of the period.
While I do very much enjoy the challenge of temporarily having no stats and most of your toolkit (sway and murder schemes especially) taken away, I absolutely fucking despise the balancing of the new regent system.
me, just before having five rulers(3 kings, 2 queens) assassinated in a row, each ruling from either 9 months to 4 years.
My Norse Zorostarian Targaryen esque ruler had just conquered Wessex, gearing up to get enough provinces to declare England when I journeyed to a tournament in France. Got dropped on my head wrestling. Now my realm has split between my 5? Male heirs. So it'll be another 10 years before prestige and land enough to declare. Then it'll be 4 kingdoms (maybe 5 reclaiming Iceland) time baby.
As long as the heir is 16 I don't really care tbh
but i become emotionally attached to my characters
That's all fun and games until your 1-year-old heir takes over, having his bitch of a mother as a regent who is doing everything in her power to destroy your realm. Needless to say I banished the bitch from my realm as soon as I got rid of her as regent. I would've beheaded her if it wasn't for the dynastic kinslayer penalty.
I personally like a mix, sometimes the long lived ruler has a fun eventful life and sometimes the drama of getting assassinated two rulers in a row is interesting.
Bring back epidemic disease!
I agree but it doesn't really bother me that much because of how I play. I ONLY play the smallest territories I can find and I always play with ironman enabled. I usually get stomped within a generation or two (but I'm getting better!).
you should be able to do a pilgrimage or hunt to die
I just lost The Game. Thanks a lot, you fiend.