How old can a character become? (2024)

I am doing my roman empire run (Starting as Rober the Fox and joining the HRE before destroying the ERE) and over the course of my run I have been picking up good genetic traits. I also picked up both the strong blood (small health boost) and witch coven (medium health boost) dynasty modifiers as well as the final perk of the blood legasty. Over the course of the game I had several long living rulers and I ended up wondering what would be the oldest a character can naturally become. My current character is Robust (medium health boost) and has finished all learning lifestyles (2 medium health boosts) meaning he is now 78 while still having a fine health.

I'm curious how long I can expect my current character to live and by how much that lifespan would be increased by adding the pure-blooded (small health boost) and fecund (life expectancy +5) traits and the upgrade from robust (medium health boost) to herculean/amazonian (huge health boost).

I've got a character who is 107 right now. I built him in the ruler designer, lots of health bonuses and stuff, just to see how many generations I could get this guy to live through. So the game definitely has the capacity to display age numbers over 100, at the very least.

There's a chance of a Health decrease each year, and once you reach a certain age it's guaranteed. IIRC the decrease is -0.125 (1/8) per year, so sooner or later life will come to an end.

(The exact numbers and chances can all be found in the defines. )

MATN got a character up to 178 in this video using the character creator and adding all the health boosting traits (from about 29 minutes in)

MrReaper182 said:

Life expectancy for nobles was into the their mid 50's in the medieval pried so for paradox to keep the game a realistic as possible not many characters should be living past the age of 60. It's so very stupid to have people live to be a hundred or over.

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And here comes the no fun squad embarrassing the forum with his serious business. Queen of England is literally immortal and this guy is running around talking about average age of nobility or some other bull.

I got the old chief Coipre mad Diarmait of Leinster to age 101. Between lucky events and a good doctor, it's easy to push that age up there as long as you don't get depressed or something. On that note, I really hope Paradox allows you to seek treatment. Lost so many characters because I forgot to have a doctor and the game doesn't recheck to treat you after you hire one.

gamerk2 said:

In theory? Unlimited, given the health decreases are percentage based. You'll always have a few outliers, but I'd expect the age curve to normalize around the mid 60s (which honestly, is too damn long. I seriously think the average age needs to be reduced by about a decade...)

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They're not percentage-based.

duch*ess Caecilia, the Hellenistic Roman ruler that united all of Sicily died at age 87 of old age.

durbal said:

100 is the max age. After that they just stop aging I think.

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I guess this is only cosmetic. I recalled seeing 100 due to this define:

MAX_AGE = 100.0 # At this age portraits will use the special age gene at full strength

But never realized when I glanced at it that it's just for portraits.

DrDarkspeed said:

MATN got a character up to 178 in this video using the character creator and adding all the health boosting traits (from about 29 minutes in)

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I wonder if this happens because the ruler designer lets you start as age 120, but does not bother to extrapolate what your health value would be that age (since it'd be zero, and you'd be dead immediately). No matter how old you are, you can't lose health faster than 1/8 per

year, and so if you start off at 120 with a lot of health, you'll still last a long time. I suspect that a character born in the game with all health-boosting traits could not make it to 178.

MrReaper182 said:

Life expectancy for nobles was into the their mid 50's in the medieval pried so for paradox to keep the game a realistic as possible not many characters should be living past the age of 60. It's so very stupid to have people live to be a hundred or over.

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Where did you get that from? It's not that we have statistics for that. People often underestimate the life expectancy of Ancient and Medieval people, especially nobleman. There are many examples of nobleman living in to their 60s and 70s.

Tiax said:

I wonder if this happens because the ruler designer lets you start as age 120, but does not bother to extrapolate what your health value would be that age (since it'd be zero, and you'd be dead immediately). No matter how old you are, you can't lose health faster than 1/8 per month, and so if you start off at 120 with a lot of health, you'll still a long time. I suspect that a character born in the game with all health-boosting traits could not make it to 178.

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You can lose 1/8 Health per year, not per month.

Karlington said:

You can lose 1/8 Health per year, not per month.

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But If you could lose 1/8 of Health per shorter period than year after, let's say, 80s, it would make it more reasonable. I think that in early medieval ages people rarely get to age more than late 70s. And especially 90s. Even now, you have aprox. 573k people in world being more than 100 years old, which is about 0,008% of whole population and only 1/1000 gets 110 years according to [wiki]. I think than in game timespan we could easily try to get 0,004% of all characters getting 100 years old and no people having more than 110.

Finear said:

But If you could lose 1/8 of Health per shorter period than year after, let's say, 80s, it would make it more reasonable. I think that in early medieval ages people rarely get to age more than late 70s. And especially 90s. Even now, you have aprox. 573k people in world being more than 100 years old, which is about 0,008% of whole population and only 1/1000 gets 110 years according to [wiki]. I think than in game timespan we could easily try to get 0,004% of all characters getting 100 years old and no people having more than 110.

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Characters in CK3 reaching 100 years old is exceedingly rare. In my current game there are 26,661 living characters, and not a single one is 100 years old. 13 of them are at age 90+.

Oh, and of those 13 who are alive at 90+, every single one is a mayor. Mayors can live very long because when a character is generated it starts with the base Health by default, regardless of age. Since mayors are often generated at an old age they tend to live longer than most other characters, since those other characters will have lost a significant amount of Health by the time they reach an equivalent age to the newly generated mayor.

If we exclude the "mayor glitch" then not a single character of 26,661 has reached age 90.

In other words, the system as it is currently set up seems to work pretty well. I don't think we need to make Health decrease faster.

According to defines:

• At age 25 there is a 7.5% chance to lose 0.125 health.
• After that the chance increases 2.2% per year.
• The cap is reached after 42 years (1 - 0.075) / 0.022 = 42.05
• At age of 25+42=67, there is a 7.5% + 2.2% * 42 = 99.9% chance to lose health.
• So health will always be lost when at age of 68+.

One interesting question is what is the expected health loss before age 68. The formula for that is health loss * expected rolls.

Expected rolls is sum of all chances.

• At age 25: 7.5%
• At age 26: 7.5% + 2.2%
• ...
• At age 67: 7.5% + 42 * 2.2%.

This gives a formula sum from 0 to 42 (7.5% + i * 2.2%) which can be refactored 43 * 7.5% + 2.2% * sum from 0 to 42 (i). With math stuff that becomes 43 * 7.5% + 2.2% * 42 * 43 / 2 which equals 23.1.

With 0.125 health loss, the expected health loss before age 68 is 0.125 * 23.1 = 2.89.

I guess the next step is to check how much health characters actually have.

Wethospu said:

With 0.125 health loss, the expected health loss before age 68 is 0.125 * 23.1 = 2.89.

I guess the next step is to check how much health characters actually have.

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 NEWBORN_HEALTH_BASE = 4.5 NEWBORN_HEALTH_SPAN = 0.5 NEWBORN_HEALTH_FEMALE_BONUS = 0.5