Behold, My New favourite Crusader Kings malicious program

© graphic: Wikipedia a picture of Alexios I

The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I, who most likely had greater to fret about than even if to castrate a dude.

Crusader Kings II is a video game with a long and proud tradition of "bugs that may still be hung in the Louvre," however I consider this new one I've realized about nowadays is my favourite.

And here's a game where a horse may become Empress of Rome, so that's something.

Paradox Interactive's Henrik Hansson, responding to a Twitter thread during which devs have been asked, "What are your favourite bugs and weird facet situations in video games???" cites the illustration of a edition of Crusader Kings II by which the Greek culture got a bit too suggest.

In CK2, before 2.4, if the Greek tradition grew too enormous, the video game would grind to a halt on account that each AI character of Greek lifestyle went via each different personality within the realm and considered castrating or blinding them. They repeated this method day by day. Aspirational!

As he says, that certain computer virus was patched out long in the past (2015, to be exact), but here's the primary I'm hearing about it, and that i find it irresistible. To provide some more history, right here's Hansson again, writing about the bug when it changed into first found on Paradox's boards:

but what definitely hits efficiency are massive empires because it increases the quantities of realms (every ruler technically holds his personal sub-realm) meaning extra opinions per character needs to be made. as an instance I found out late video game that large greek/byzantine empires have been slowing down the video game as a result of each greek adult become evaluating towards each other person in the realm "am i able to castrate?", and this took up like a tremendous chunk of the performance of the AI. I consider 70% of the AI calls for were about castrating or blinding a person once I loaded late-game byzantine saves. fortuitously here is fastened within the coming 2.4 patch. A enjoyable little anecdote.

Crusader Kings II is a game the place the AI ought to continuously be calculating just about each point of medieval political and armed forces life, from the smallest sieges to the largest plots to usurp a ruler. To have 70% of a major empire's AI demands be only about weighing up whether to blind someone or bring to a halt their balls is very, very funny to me.