But Domnall’s low rationality tally means he has no such qualms, and now he presses for a Casus Belli: a justification for going to war. Most rulers will only go to war against forces that they overpower by 20%. Too bad for Diarmait, he didn’t factor in Domnall’s irrationality. If he did, perhaps he thought that since their forces are evenly matched, Domnall wouldn’t actually act on it. Perhaps the Earl Diarmait of Laigin detected a certain drive burning in Domnall’s eye when they went out drinking one time. This means that rather than having an opinion threshold of attacking others when his opinion on them is under 20, he’ll happily attack anyone with an opinion he holds of under 50. They upend Domnall’s friendly attitude, because the way the game works is to add half of each to the threshold for his willingness to go to war with people. These two values are critical for his future.
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Aggression is a ruler’s propensity for warmongering and realising its ambitions, and rationality is how straightforward the ruler behaves.ĭomnall has the Ambitious trait, which gives his internal aggression score +40, and the Arbitrary trait, which gives his rationality score –20. Greed affects a ruler’s tendency to try to accrue money. They’re the result of developer Paradox imagining what might influence the behaviour of medieval people: there’s zeal, the extent to which the ruler hates heretics and members of other religions. Traits cover such positive and negative peculiarities as Flamboyant Schemer, which grants bonuses to a ruler’s ability to scheme and set plots, and Leper, which makes a ruler more or less infertile and reduces their ability to conduct diplomacy.Īll these characteristics are visible to the player, but every computer-controlled character also has another set of five hidden personality values. He also has a set of several traits, just like every other character. In normal circumstances he wouldn’t consider attacking him, since the standard threshold for an AI to consider attacking another ruler of the same religion and culture is an opinion below 20.īut Crusader Kings 2 is never this simple, and opinion is not the only characteristic that makes up Domnall. His opinion of the Earl Diarmait of Laigin is 25, a lower value but still pretty friendly. Now, our Domnall really likes three of his neighbours. This simple idea, that characters’ opinions of each other can differ and that they inform what they’ll do to each other, is a large part of how Crusader Kings 2’s medieval world feels so analogue, so human, despite comprising simply of numbers. And they affect everything that he decides to do to other rulers, and what they’ll do to him. Each is recorded on a scale that goes from boiling hatred at –100 to dumbstruck love at 100, and at any time each might change according to how he acts and how he changes over the course of his life.
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To the computer, Domnall is long list of opinions: those he has of every other ruler in the game, and those every other ruler has of him. And at the heart of how it models all these dense and messy human complexities is a single value that governs the way its little computer aristocrats behave: It’s about marriages and dependencies, accordances and kinship.
![crusader kinds 2 the downcast crusader kinds 2 the downcast](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NsxRPWG9Bgg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Crusader Kings 2 is a game all about people. Whether the player is interacting with them or not, they’ll be vying with each other, allying, marrying, dying, giving birth, and generally doing all of the things that your ruler can do. But he’s also ambitious and a just little crazy, and he’s about to make a big mess of the Emerald Isle.ĭomnall is one of the hundreds of characters across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that Crusader Kings 2 is simulating here in the year 1066. He’s friends with his neighbouring rulers, and all seems peaceful. This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games.