In this version of CK2, the world would be a lot small, figuratively speaking. The pool of people who you could interact with would shrink, and so a less diverse player may have to rely on local talent only. But a genius character fluent in 4, 5, 6 languages? They could use their talents to assemble a court of the best and brightest from all of Europe and beyond. A well-versed and cultured ruler could go on to do something legendary with that gathering of great minds. (That, or fabricate a claim on every county in the Abbasid Empire, whatever)

/Paraphrase

So I'm not a history major, and I'm not an expert on medieval times. If you're reading this and you are one of these things, please tear this argument to shreds. But besides how accurate it is, as a game mechanic, I think it's an interesting new take on CK2. Although, the deeper you go down the rabbit hole, the more it seems like the game would have to be built from the ground up with this in mind. Events, diplomatic actions, life focuses, societies, all would be integrated into a language system. Some ideas of small features that could be a Languaged CK2:

- Misunderstandings between two characters speaking similar but different languages
- Learning a friend's language, or creating a friendship based on learning together
- Scholarly focused characters could endeavor to learn another language
- Christian society pressuring its member to learn Latin if they aren't fluent

Cultural conversion would work different for languages: Instead of attempting to whitewash every county into your culture of choice like in CK2, the locals could come to understand an additional language or combine it with theirs to make a new dialect. This might be done through something like an education program, or (probably far more likely than paying for the unwashed peasants to go to school!) an influx of foreign traders would bring their language and make it the language of trade, similar to English in the real world. This kind of approach/mentality would make the CK2 world a more interesting and flavorful place. Just imagine: An entire world of people who hold both their native tongue and customs, as well as speak Horse!

Glitterhoof can be my Chancellor anyneigh <3

I also pondered the idea of acquiring multiple languages and the difficulty of communicating between speakers from different language groups. And more factors should influence the development of languages for sure! The way that language is incorporated could also create some new decisions for diplomacy. If your main character lacks the knowledge of a language, that language barrier could still be surpassed by appointing a diplomat or a spouse with the required language. On the other hand you could choose to negotiate by yourself and perhaps miss some of the subtleties afforded by a decent translator or firsthand fluency.

Perhaps you could develop pidgins or creoles but how easy is it for those types of languages to become the majority language of a whole county? It would be an interesting path to take towards understanding your subjects rather than assimilating them at least.

So I love these ideas, but I would love to find a way to incorporate them without extensively nodding vanilla events. As far as I know, there is no way, say, to reduce diplomatic range unless you share the same language or have an interpreter with the same language. I think it is only hard coded in the defines. Any other suggested approaches are welcome, but this type of “language makes my world small” is a long term dream for the mod.

Yeah, this kind of mechanic is on the scale of getting the entire CK2+ team or HIP team and having them work on it. My guess is you'd need a group of people who are thoroughly familiar with the game's code and engine. Your mod reminded me of this though and it'd be cool if this idea was bounced around more often.

I was actually hoping to hear about a mechanic like this in CK3, but their recent dev diary didn't seem to mention anything like that.

So I’m toying with some ideas that might allow something like this. Play testing a couple of them this week. 🤞

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