Immortal Ruler not so immortal?

[Frankie Fire]

So I wanted to play a little silly and try out the immortal trait. In my first game, starting in a random new world as a custom manhattan nation, my ruler lived happily to the age of 250-ish until Scotland (who would have thought) finally steamrolled me. In my second immortal game I created a little nation bordering to Ming, and now my ruler died in her nineties. Same thing happens after reloading, 3 times in a row now, just a couple of months sooner or later than the first time.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810479697

So: what the hell? I always spend ridiculous amounts of time in creating my custom nations to make them the way I want them to be. In this case, I wanted my ruler not to die, and there is no indication in the designer that this might actually happen. Immortality already is insanely expensive, crippling your custom nation's ideas, so why the devs thought it is a fun idea to screw over your meticulously "balanced" nation is something I really don't understand. Does anyone know if there are dependencies for Immortality triggering a normal death by old age?

[shoki]

Immortal only means they won't die from age and disease events. Did you assign him as a general maybe, because he can easily die in a battle.

[Aaronthelemon]

As shoki said can you confirm he died of old age and not war related.

[Frankie Fire]

Thanks for the reply. Indeed I posted the screenshot for this very reason, but maybe the quality is is too bad to read it properly. There you can see "died naturally of old age", "reports of immortality seem exaggerated". But I actually did make my ruler a general in an event (blabla ... general with 70 army tradition ... ), just out of curiosity to see how good she is. But I never assigned her to an army. The death alert suggests this is working as designed, as it directly relates to the immortality trait being "exaggerated reports", but I think this a bad design, and maybe someone knows the reason the rulers sometimes die of old age and sometimes don't. I couldn't find anything in the .txt/.lua files.

[Aaronthelemon]

Oh I see now, Ive never heard of this occuring it would be curious to look in the files and see if there are any triggers for this happening or what the odds are.

[ACExtravaganza]

Perhaps this is just a bugged game?

[shoki]

Originally posted by Frankie Fire:

There you can see "died naturally of old age",

Oh lol never read this part of the message and thus didn't know you know exactly what the ruler died of. Learned something new, yay!

[Foxxhound]

I can confirm this several times over, both with legitimately converted CKII saves and edited EUIV saves. I think there's more too it, though. There's something odd about the rulers and heirs. This should probably be its own topic, but I'm going to post it here anyway.

What frustrates me the most is that the ruler always, and I mean every single time, dies eleven to thirteen months before my heir comes of age, regardless of the current ruler's age or activity. I've been editing the EUIV saves lately because I've been testing to determine what the reason is.

I'm pretty sure it's a bug, but it only seems to apply to heirs acquired naturally. That is, it does not apply to heirs obtained through events, or at least not the 'Talented and Ambitious Daughter' event (id = dynastic_events.3). That was the only time my immortal ruler did not die at the usual time. In fact, my ambitious daughter died in her 70s while my immortal ruler lived on, despite being in her 160s.

This has not happened to my non-monarchies, which do not have heirs. However, rulers still die of old age despite being immortal. As to the cause of death that it may mention in the popup event message, it seems to be based on only the first trait the ruler has. One of my rulers died with the immortal trait first in the list. It mentioned their immortality being exaggerated. I went into the save file and switched the order, putting 'kind-hearted' first and 'immortal' second. I reloaded, and the ruler died at roughtly the same time, except the popup mentioned kind-hearted, not immortality. This has been fairly consistent, except when my ruler died from an "accident" while drilling troops. I don't think it was related to increased risk from leading an army, though, because it also occurred around the time they usually died.

I found that by saving and loading every month as the heir approches age seems to prevent the ruler from dying. If this is done until after the heir turns 15, the heir seems to die instead within a year.

What led me to post this now is that it happened again. My ruler was leading an army, but not in combat or drilling this time. Interestingly, no flavor text related to the ruler's traits was given this time.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Frankie Fire:

Thanks for the reply. Indeed I posted the screenshot for this very reason, but maybe the quality is is too bad to read it properly. There you can see "died naturally of old age", "reports of immortality seem exaggerated". But I actually did make my ruler a general in an event (blabla ... general with 70 army tradition ... ), just out of curiosity to see how good she is. But I never assigned her to an army. The death alert suggests this is working as designed, as it directly relates to the immortality trait being "exaggerated reports", but I think this a bad design, and maybe someone knows the reason the rulers sometimes die of old age and sometimes don't. I couldn't find anything in the .txt/.lua files.

I seldom play Custom Nations and never had an Immortal Ruler so the following is part guessing:

I think every general (ruler/heir or neither) has a chance to die each year/month. This is also applied if the general at the moment does not lead an army (else you could assign your generals only for battle, unassign them afterwards and keep them for the entire game if they don't die in battle).

A (mortal) ruler/heir has a chance to die each year/month.
So a ruler/heir as general has two chances to die, the "ruler death chance" and the "general death chance".
A third death chance would be battle/drilling but that does not apply in your case.

I suppose, "Immortal" only prevents dying from "normal" ruler death, not dying from "normal" general death nor general "battle" death.

I don't know is this is an oversight or working as intended. The line "Immortality was exaggerated" just may be there as they wrote a line for every trait without thinking it through.

[corisai]

Immortality trait states clearly that you can die from violence. So - did you ever lose your ruler WITHOUT making him general?

I had only one try of this trait & my king wasn't general - and he'd lived ~ up to 200 age.

[Sl3]

only astec sacrifice should be able to kill immortal leaders imo.

[Aaronthelemon]

Originally posted by KoSKorpze:

only astec sacrifice should be able to kill immortal leaders imo.

Immortality is not invulnerability.

[corisai]

Originally posted by KoSKorpze:

only astec sacrifice should be able to kill immortal leaders imo.

Think about immortality as something like vampire from movie. You're strong, you're fast - but you definitely don't want catch bullets from entire line of enemy musketeers. And you need to especially avoid cannons.

[kazaddum]

Originally posted by KoSKorpze:

only astec sacrifice should be able to kill immortal leaders imo.

The tooltip outright tells you that violence can end you.

[Foxxhound]

Originally posted by corisai:

Immortality trait states clearly that you can die from violence. So - did you ever lose your ruler WITHOUT making him general?

I had only one try of this trait & my king wasn't general - and he'd lived ~ up to 200 age.

Yes, I have DEFINITELY lost 'immortal' rulers/heirs without making them generals. I meant to clarify this but somehow this point didn't make it to the final post.

However, the rulers/heirs who were also generals who DID happen to die WHILE leading an army always did so at the time they would have died if they had been sitting on their throne at the time without having ever lifted a sword in their life (in other words, whatever caused the armchair monarchs/heirs to die in the usual three-month window was the same thing that triggered the deaths of the ones who were authorized to lead armies, regardless of whether they were actually assigned to one at the time of their death).

King/General Alexios IV Palaiologos was marching in North Africa (not drilling) when he randomly died, at age 20, 11 months and 10 days before his heir came of age. Interestingly, the popup mentioned nothing of his ruler traits, which I added for testing purposes in this order: 1: Kind-Hearted, 2: Immortal, 3: Conqueror. I wonder if this is because he didn't have a general trait.
My speculation is that when a leader (general/admiral/conquistador/explorer) dies, regardless of whether they are actively leading an army, and regardless of whether the leader is also your ruler or heir, the game only checks general traits, not ruler traits.

Similarly, Ming ruler Empress Jan I, who was not a general, died in her mid-late 170s (probably sipping tea in a silk robe daydreaming about the Green Destiny in a palace built entirely out of prosperity and divine favor), just as her heir Prince Jianzhi turned 14. This was the same age Jan I was when her father, the previous emperor, died in his late 40s, I believe. I forget his name, but he was actually the first and only ruler I've had die in a drilling accident. However, I paid little attention to that death because he was only decent, not great, and he wasn't exactly young either.

Of these four examples (but certainly not my only examples), only Alexios IV and Empress Jan I were immortal. During Jan's long reign, I observed similarly odd patterns in the deaths of most of my heirs, but I don't feel as confident about my speculations as I find heirs more difficult to observe. Heirs do not always exist for observation, and observation is limited to a 15-year window after which time it seems that my ruler and heir appear to be safe and clear of anomalous death risk.

I've read in Paradox forums that 'good' rulers (those with high skills and positive traits, I guess) don't live as long as bad ones, who sometimes persist into their 70s. And rulers are more likely to die if their heir is bad, and more likely to persist if their heir is good. Personally, however, I would say this is mostly untrue based on my recent observations. The only consistency I've seen is when my ruler/heir dies relative to the heir's coming-of-age.

Originally posted by kazaddum:

The tooltip outright tells you that violence can end you.

Yes, the tooltip for the immortal trait says:
"This ruler has found a way to cheat death and potentially live forever. While immune to disease and old age, they may still die from physical violence."

However, I would like to point out that what the tooltip tells you about disease and old age is outright false, as my supposedly immortal Empress Jan I has actually died from both. I thought it extremely fair to reload/savescum on both occasions. Specificially, one occasion said she "died naturally of old age" (DEATH_OLD_AGE) and the other said, "A sudden illness took her from us too early" (DEATH_RANDOM_5). These incidents prompted my first expedition into the game files with the expectation to correct this mechanic, but all I found were the localization tags (which I named in the previous sentence) associated with both deaths in the "personalityoptions_l_english.yml" localization file under the comment line "Death Reasons." The only evidence I have that the Immortal trait has any effect on gameplay at all is the fact that I had a character in her 170s in the first place.

Finally,

Originally posted by corisai:

Think about immortality as something like vampire from movie. You're strong, you're fast - but you definitely don't want catch bullets from entire line of enemy musketeers. And you need to especially avoid cannons.

Have you seen "V for Vendetta?" I don't think he was a vampire like the protagonist of "Dracula," but this guy literally lets a squad of military police with automatic rifles plus the king of stormtroopers (with a revolver) empty their entire clips (or cylinder) into him before killing them in slow motion while they reload. Then he staggers home, talks to an infatuated schoolgirl, and dies. Probably from old age.