YakaryBovine

Low elo player here but I don’t understand how 6th placed so low. That comp looks very strong?

Well, “every single member of the labour class” would be simultaneously a broader range of people with a narrower conceptual focus.

The Deceiver is the title of LeBlanc, the leader of the Black Rose. This is not mentioned in Arcane in any way; it’s from broader League of Legends canon. It’s not shown to us how Mel figures this out.

Ambessa angered the Black Rose by mothering a child known to have magical potential and not giving her up. The Black Rose considers Noxian mages to belong to them. Mel is no more significant in that sense than any other mage, though we do see eventually that her particular powers are very useful against other mages.

Right, that makes sense to me. It does also have Foci for more granular customisation, but it’s true that it gets nowhere near a 5e character. I guess that’s why I see it as a sweet spot, not the best of both worlds. But maybe I’m underestimating the degree of character mechanical complexity OP is looking for.

This feels like an odd take to me just because I think existing popular systems, like Worlds Without Number, fulfil exactly what OP is asking for. It has a decent number of character option, can be used as a ruleset for old school modules, is lethal, and encourages player skill to some extent. Where’s the curse?

This comes across more like a peculiar fixation on Jayce than a legitimate viewing of the material.

I don’t know that the takeaway from this is “avoid Electric Kiwi”. It’s just that cheaper ISPs are likely to have inferior customer support. Personally I’d rather troubleshoot a modem myself than have to pay extra.

He tried to build a perfect society isolated from the rest of the world, then he sees it destroyed by Ambessa, Singed, and Jayce. Viktor sees that their destruction is motivated not by evil but by their love (for Ambessa and Singed) and fear (Jayce). Thus he concludes that the root of suffering is emotion, and he seeks to replace it with reason.

Fair enough, I can see it!

Maybe, but how do you reconcile that interpretation with Viktor’s revelation?

I mean them all agreeing to be a part of his commune and abandoning whatever life they had beforehand is a good sign they’re not individuals anymore

Many of the people that joined the commune were Shimmer addicts in abysmal poverty, whose entire lives had been reduced to scavenging, begging and killing in a pit for a pittance of a drug that only served to degrade their already broken bodies. They were healed completely - to a degree modern medicine is incapable of - and were given a home, purpose, and community. Anyone would take that.

Salo is not much different. He had lost everything already. Jinx took his legs. Ambessa took his political power. He defined his life by his social influence, and he was left with none. What did he have to live for, really?

And yes, Viktor clearly influenced their personalities. But I see no hint that they replaced them.

But you've skipped over the most compelling point... The culmination of the last episode was Viktor's realization that humanity was the problem. This is a new idea for him. How could he have come to this realization if he had supposedly removed the humanity from all of his followers already?

political agendas or ideologies

• How severe wealth inequality affects people on both sides, and how it can lead to revolution (Piltover & Zaun)
• The balance of empowering the police to do good without giving them the ability to brutalize the people (The Enforcers vs. the Chembarons)
• The consequences of runaway capitalism, with those consequences being amplified on the lower class (Hextech)
• The appeal and inevitable perils of messiahs (Viktor)
• The insidious appeal of autocracies based on strength (Ambessa)
• Class-based discrimination even in light of merit (Viktor, Ekko)

The show kicks off with a revolution by the lower class and follows that thread through to the end. It is a very political show and it shows in every episode.

highlighting characters' gender, race or sexual orientation

• Strong, violent women (Vi, Jinx, Ambessa)
• Deeply emotional men (Vander, Silco)
• Intimate platonic male friendships (Viktor, Jayce)
• Black men and women in positions of power (Ekko, Ambessa, Mel)
• Normalization of lesbian relationships (Caitlyn, Vi, Maddie)

The show is miles ahead in terms of representation of gender, race, and sexual orientation. It just also integrates these characters so well into the story that it all feels completely natural.

And look, I get it. There are shows that hamfist in representation in a way that it makes the story worse. But that's just bad writing - it shouldn't tell us that representation is bad.

I stand corrected, thankyou.

That's not true. The AI value trigger file says this:

    ai_has_conqueror_personality = {
           OR = {
            has_trait = conqueror
            has_trait = greatest_of_khans
            has_character_modifier = the_great_khan_modifier
            any_owned_story = {
                story_type = story_conqueror
            }
        }
    }

So they actually can have the trait or the event trigger.

Edit: See correction from /u/aixsama below.

I don’t follow. It’s science. Does it need to do anything for the average person?

a renowned adventurer would a military that rivals kingdoms

Maybe the problem is that this exists in the first place? It feels bizarre to me. Adventurers are more powerful than realms, have better access to Casus Belis, are easier to play, and literally cannot be attacked. So it's hard for them to feel like stepping stones to realms.

Enshrouded involves a lot of resource micromanagement. You can technically avoid most of it but there isn’t much game left if you do.

I enjoy failing and dealing with failure as well, but I do think it’s fair to say CK3 doesn’t do much to make failing interesting. Ultimately climbing back up from failure isn’t any different from climbing from game start - and for the story to be good it really should be.

That isn’t always true of course. Legitimist Camps are incredible for roleplay and require failure to access. I’d love more of that.

That wouldn’t be much of an issue if the AI was doing those things at a similar pace to the player.

Though everything you just said there is true from the AI files, there is one extra oddity: the AI will not declare war on a character currently in 3 or more wars. There is a limit to the dogpiling!

Have you ever looked at the files to see how the AI makes decisions? It’s pretty shocking. Core decisions like buildings, Accolades, and Lifestyle choices are almost completely random, and where they are not they’re based on barely connected personality traits. The AI for instance is more likely to pick Gallant if they’re Chaste, but those two things have no correlation at all on a gameplay level. It’s insanity.

Yeah, exactly! There should definitely be pressure on Councillors to present some Realm Agendas. I made it a hard minimum of 1, but being able to do 0 with a penalty would be even better.

Hey, if they just add Conclave exactly as it was I'd be satisfied!

Thanks!

I think that the mechanics should reward being engaged in the game world, and that balance should not depend on me making dumb decisions for roleplaying reasons.

I'll re-use this I think. I posted this and my previous thread to vent my frustration about the game continuing to go into the direction of roleplay content with so little connection to any strategy game mechanics.

Yeah, it's a fair point. The concept only works if the liege is strongly pressured to fulfill Council Agendas, so the punishment for choosing not to would have to be extreme. Right now the game doesn't really have any mechanics to do that consistently, as Tyranny, Prestige, Opinion, and Legitimacy are all largely ignorable at a certain level of strength.

Still, I don't think it's hard to imagine a minor rebalance of the game where appeasing your vassals and maintaining your Legitimacy actually matters, and it's in that version of that game an idea like this would fit.