Some Traits should be hidden

[Bartholome Mitre]

I find myself quite often in search for marriage partners like I'm some evil scientist trying to create a new master race. This doesn't feel very medieval, more like 19th-20th century. To many informations are available about the different characters - even the ones far away.

Fertility: Impotence, Sterile, Fecund
It seems unlikely that I would know if someone is fertile or not - I would assume that a man in his 20s would be fertile, and in the middle ages I would have no means to detect any medical condition, that prevents him from making his wife pregnant. Of course there are reasons, why a character is more likely to remain childless, be it age, health or psychological or life style reasons. But being able to just filter for "fertile" seems a bit to easy.

Sexual Orientation
The middle ages don't strike me as a period, where people woud openly talk about being gay or any other sexual orientation that is not hetero sexual. And unless a character is exposed as homosexual or lives in a religion that fully accepts same sex relationships, I don't see a reason why I should know the real sexual orientation of any character (unless I have a close relationship with them maybe). Since also non-heteros can have kids, there would be no severe harm done, if there was a "official/hidden" sexual orientation system.

Distance
How can I know every Trait of some Khan on the other side of the world? I'm sure a character would have a certain reputation maybe, but that should be it and would have to be either proven right or wrong if my character ever gets to meet him. Distance or diplomatic range should matter.

Hidden Traits or hiding traits
I think the game would benefit from hidden traits that can be revealed by events. On the other hand, maybe it would be great if characters could intentionally hide certain traits - if they are not accepted by the religion they live in. If successful they could reduce the effect of the unwanted trait, but if discovered, the scandal would probably be more severe.

Well, these are just a few thoughts I had. Let me know what you think.

[Willem]

There were fertility tests even back then, one of them the male and female pissed in a flask and if after 10 days there were worms they were considered infertile.
So yes this was a thing and they "knew" if someone was fertile or not.

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

The most deceitful people are not known to be deceitful, only when their deceit is made clear.

[Professor Hardknocks]

Make a mod then. Or ask someone to.

I surely don't want this. I want a game, not an attempt at a reality simulator. By the logic you're using above, every trait should be hidden and require schemes to learn with different scheme types for different trait types - only "Fame" traits would be known, and relations of close family and friend might reveal ONE lifestyle trait.

[Professor Hardknocks]

Originally posted by Chief Minister of Gaming:

The most deceitful people are not known to be deceitful.

The devil wears a suit and tie, everyone loves him, and nobody would suspect him of being the devil. In fact, people probably worship him as a messiah or savior, or at minimum, consider him a moral hero. Anyone that doesn't like him much - well, they're crazy, conspiracy theorists, bigots, full of hate, etc.

High intrigue should - under this type of system - allow you to project yourself as being Content when you're actually Ambitious if your religion does not have Warmonger stuff that makes Content a sin (to make them a more attractive vassal), or flag as having Hale or Strong or hide a major flaw.

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

Originally posted by Shadow:

Originally posted by Chief Minister of Gaming:

The most deceitful people are not known to be deceitful.

The devil wears a suit and tie, everyone loves him, and nobody would suspect him of being the devil. In fact, people probably worship him as a messiah or savior, or at minimum, consider him a moral hero. Anyone that doesn't like him much - well, they're crazy, conspiracy theorists, bigots, full of hate, etc.

The deceitful trait might be known to parents, but not to others.

[paul32]

I could think that this would be a cool "realistic" mode or something like that

[Professor Hardknocks]

Originally posted by Chief Minister of Gaming:

Originally posted by Shadow:

The devil wears a suit and tie, everyone loves him, and nobody would suspect him of being the devil. In fact, people probably worship him as a messiah or savior, or at minimum, consider him a moral hero. Anyone that doesn't like him much - well, they're crazy, conspiracy theorists, bigots, full of hate, etc.

The deceitful trait might be known to parents, but not to others.

Maybe every year you know someone gives a chance to reveal a trait; using the intrigue scores of the two characters and personality types to impact what to reveal. If you have good intrigue, you will figure people out quicker and know how to appear favorable. If your king is Just, you wouldn't reveal yourself to have Arbitrary, because your intrigue offers that you know your king.

[Bartholome Mitre]

Originally posted by Shadow:

Make a mod then. Or ask someone to.

I surely don't want this. I want a game, not an attempt at a reality simulator. By the logic you're using above, every trait should be hidden and require schemes to learn with different scheme types for different trait types - only "Fame" traits would be known, and relations of close family and friend might reveal ONE lifestyle trait.

No, that's not how far I would take it.

[EA Latium]

I totally agree, it seems weird that as players we know everyone's sexuality, even when homosexuality is considered a "secret" by many different faiths.

[JC]

That is a pretty interesting idea.. Something that could be worked into a DLC. I'd love it.. could really add to the whole spying side of things..

Using your spy to 'learn" hidden traits.. How cool would that be!

every character could have a couple hidden traits.. that would be so fun to learn peoples secrets. Learning them could trigger events and such.

[Merque]

I love this idea! I hate the notion of CK just being a glorified marriage simulator. I'd love the option to disguise features, perhaps even make traits show up as probabilities depending on how well you know another character, how far away they are, how influential they've become in the larger scheme of things e.g. based on yorur knowlede and hearsay a character X has a Y probability of being brave. If a character is truly deceitful, they'd have a larger chance of showing of "wrong" traits to you as a player etc.

[BaCaz]

There are lots of these things you mention that you don't know, it just tells you what they represent, i.e there might be homosexuals that you see as hetrosexual and so on but I guess it could be fun with an option to obscure even more

[Сааребас]

Guess, it depends on how you look at it.

I see traits and other information more like a reputation rather then truthfullnes.
Which explains, to me, how characters can act out of expectation.

Not saying that should explain it for everyone, just how I explain stuff away.

[Zero, Dark Knight]

There's a huge flaw with this system, well, two actually but they play into the same thing.

1: This would only challenge the player, it wouldn't change the AIs behaviour in the slightest.
This would be because the AI doesn't seem to give much care for who it marries, who takes over the throne, the AI can't be 'knocked out of the game' via defeat, like players can.

It wouldn't change a thing except it'd make the players life miserable and give them more micromanagement to do.

"Oh I want to marry a good spouse. This one good stats. I can either risk marrying now and discover it's actually ambitious, deceitful, slothful, adulterer or risk someone else marrying him/her while I discover some traits which take a year each."

2: Such things wouldn't be able to be random. Either certain traits which would lead to players just creating a guide/spread sheet, have X + Y then you've got Z too, creating busy work for the player involving a lot of guess work, or alt tabbing to the guide/spread sheet in question.

or they'd have to be truly random, which case, see #1.

Either way I don't see the idea of hidden traits being a good thing for the game. So I think the idea that the player has all the information available is the best solution.

Now, if you want to propose *new* traits on top of existing ones - a new set of things, designed around changing characters even more or making them good, bad, giving them motives, that's a whole different issue. ... that could be fun. but it also sounds incredibly difficult with what mechanics we have in-game.

[Jp78]

Just made a mod to adress this. It's called "obfusCKAte" and it's available in the workshop.