Hello again folks!

This diary will be a bit on the short side due to the frenzy at the office this week, but since it recently came up on the forum, I thought I'd say a little bit about regnal numbers. One of the nice little touches in Europa Universalis III (and its predecessors) is that kings have proper regnal numbers. This feature was missing from the original Crusader Kings, but I am pleased to announce that it will be fully implemented in Crusader Kings II. The way it works is that the first names of actual scripted holders in the character database are counted for each landed title at game start. Regnal numbers are only displayed for Dukes and above, which includes the Pope (a kingdom tier title.) The Holy Father, however, is a bit special in that he changes name on accession. So, a character named, say, Étienne Aubert could get the name Innocent VI if he became Pope.



Somewhat related to regnal numbers is the state of a character at the time of death. In Crusader Kings II, you can browse back through dead characters and see exactly which titles they held and what regnal number they had. I'll leave you with some extra screenshots while you're waiting for the next dev diary, which will be about our beautiful new map. Failing unexpected delays, it should be posted on february 4.




Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead

 

[Doctor Zoviet]

You know, it's probably dependent on your Dynasty, not the kingdom. It makes the most sense, that IS, after all, what the game is about, your dynasty. And it would be linear enough to make sense to most players.

 

[Caranorn]

I was expecting it to be along the lines of you hover the mouse over the title King of such and such and it says Yourname the Number.
So that kings of many places could be at once Henry III, Henry VI and Henry I. but maybe that would be overly complicating things. And handy on becoming Emperor as youd need another number for that too. But probably itd take too much the computer to keep track of all that for every title and make the save files longer than the nile.

I think the number for minor titles is people to hold that title not people with that name to hold that title no? or maybe thats just in england or just recently possibly. The 8th baronet of small village, or ninth baron somevalleysomewhere. Reckoning from the first to hold the current incarnation of the title, rather than first with your christian name.

That's just England. On the continent the lesser nobility usually uses the same numbering system royalty uses. Note that in some genealogies some non title bearing members are counted as well (for instance founders of a dynasty)...

 

[safferli]

I prefer the Maciejowski Bible. I've never been such beautiful Medieval illuminated iniatures:

The Economist's Christmas edition had a nice article on medieval illumination and manuscripts: http://www.economist.com/node/17722535

 

[SolSara]

Which brings up one of the things I found annoying, especially in the later days of DV: any ruler that lived a long time (30+ years as ruler say) would end up with a huge number of traits. There needs to be some sort of throttle to keep it interesting without getting ridiculous. Something like 4-6 green traits with no limit on the red and blue ones should be the norm not the 8-10 or more I regularly see.

We have a lot of traits in CK2 and most of them will be added to the characters through events. I have tried to balance the traits by scripting the events so the character can have, say, no more than four personality traits. This will of course be tested and we will try to make sure it will create interesting characters.

They should diversify character portaits. The all dukes and earls look like brothers of Edward III.

Pre-alpha.

Btw Norse religion! Awesome! Will the mongols be buddhist? xD

Eh, no. Crusader Kings had pagan as one of the religions and we wanted to do something more with that so we added a culture group named pagan and then several new kinds of pagan religions, for example Norse.

It looks like they haven't brought many graphic artists in yet because they haven't done much work on the faces.

The artist responsible for the character portraits are currently working on the GUI, which has a higher priority.

Nice update! They shouldn't all be allowed to be on the same plane.

I think it would be really cool if the faces were designed so that a certain facial setup looked like Johan, one looked like Doomdark, one like Kallocain and so on...

Nice idea! I'll talk to Yonaz about that...

Related to the topic of regnal numbers, what about patronymics, for those cultures (Iberian, Scandinavian, Slavic, Celtic) that historically named individuals after their fathers: e.g., Sancho II, king of Castilla at the 1066 start, would have been named Sancho Fernandez, not Sancho Jimenez (his dynasty name in-game, after his distant ancestor Jimeno). I.e., Sancho, son of Fernando. For this reason, I think that surname should be differentiated from dynasty name, although I will not begrudge the devs for not complicating the naming system they have already adopted (e.g., Edward III Plantagenet).

We do have patronymics. If your character is named Jonas Karlsson and he has a son named Oscar then the son's last name will be Jonasson.

 

[vadermath]

That's neat! Is there a possibility of adding some sort of parchment/journal thingy in which the player could keep his notes, and perhaps write an ongoing history of his realm? Would be really useful and immersive, especially for AARs.

 

[Nick B II]

I was expecting it to be along the lines of you hover the mouse over the title King of such and such and it says Yourname the Number.
So that kings of many places could be at once Henry III, Henry VI and Henry I. but maybe that would be overly complicating things. And handy on becoming Emperor as youd need another number for that too. But probably itd take too much the computer to keep track of all that for every title and make the save files longer than the nile.

It won''t be hard for the computer to keep track of. It's just a text list. It only needs to be updated when a title changes hands, and the new ruler's number can easily be added to the bit of the file that remembers who has what title.

It's long-ass text list because you have to do it for all Duke and King-titles, but modern computers do have hundreds of GB on their HDs, and several GB of RAM, so it'd be very hard to make a text-list long enough to affect performance.

I sincerely doubt many rulers will have more then two numbers behind their name. IIRC only the King title's number shows if you're a King and there aren't that many King-titles. It also seems like you won't be able to emulate the Capets and name all your Kings the same thing, so you'll be lucky to get to III in any title. And if your highest ordinal is William III you can only have two others.

Nick

 

[CatalanNation]

OK, some things I've noticed in the screenies:

I'm intrigued at that option. "Levy" is not definitely the same option than raising an entire troop of a province as in CK1, so some sort of standing armies or similar must be in, or at least, that armies function a bit diferently than in CK1. Interesting.

So among the titles the former King did no have... there's no Earldom on it, so maybe Dukes and Kings will no longer have to be "Counts" of a province. Nice addition if so.

So, let's play a bit!

I say;

1. Ruler Character
2. Laws [confirmed]
3. Technology
4. Military
5. Espionage
6. Economy
7. Diplomacy
8. Religion
9. Court/character viewer

 

[LaIsHeR]

OK, some things I've noticed in the screenies:

I'm intrigued at that option. "Levy" is not definitely the same option than raising an entire troop of a province as in CK1, so some sort of standing armies or similar must be in, or at least, that armies function a bit differently than in CK1. Interesting.

Seem like it is the same, levy were basically freemen who provided one man from the family to fight for the lord. And they had usually time limit before they leaved home (3-6 months). So basically we still have hope, that we can manually recruit mercenaries? And will there be slave military (Muslims)?

 

[Annibal]

So what do you think is this?

 

[Zzzzz...]

@LaisherYeah. Sounds possible. I'll guess that the mercs will be the "standard" army

@Annibal - Legitimacy?

 

[the_hdk]

nah it's just his awesomeness level.

it's 7 so he's still a tool

 

[The Kingmaker]

We do have patronymics. If your character is named Jonas Karlsson and he has a son named Oscar then the son's last name will be Jonasson.

Awesome! I hope the Anglo-Danish characters have this too (ex. Harold Godwinson's eldest son was Godwine Haroldson, etc.).

 

[RedRooster81]

Awesome! I hope the Anglo-Danish characters have this too (ex. Harold Godwinson's eldest son was Godwine Haroldson, etc.).

I hope it is a rather broad feature, but that might require an equivalency table of some kind. Scandinavian patronyms might be easier to generate automatically than Iberian or Celtic ones. Then there is the British bastard designation "fitz": e.g., FitzRoy = the king's bastard (from the French "fils du roi"), or Fitz; though early on the Normans and Bretons in England seem to have used it without necessarily implying illegitimacy.

 

[RedRooster81]

Seem like it is the same, levy were basically freemen who provided one man from the family to fight for the lord. And they had usually time limit before they leaved home (3-6 months). So basically we still have hope, that we can manually recruit mercenaries? And will there be slave military (Muslims)?

I am hoping your own retinue (your household knights), crusaders, and mercenaries are mainly who you bring on long campaigns, above all outside of your kingdom. Levies had to be home for the harvest and generally did not have great morale.

 

[Nikolai]

We do have patronymics. If your character is named Jonas Karlsson and he has a son named Oscar then the son's last name will be Jonasson.

This is not the same as dynasty name, right? As Jonasson in this case would be the surname in more modern Scandinavia(pre 1900-ish), as you probably know. And that would be a pain to play with same dynasty = avoid game over.

 

[RedRooster81]

This is not the same as dynasty name, right? As Jonasson in this case would be the surname in more modern Scandinavia(pre 1900-ish), as you probably know. And that would be a pain to play with same dynasty = avoid game over.

No, it seems it would be distinct from a dynastic name, but attached to anyone who is the son of someone named Jonas.

 

[Caranorn]

I hope it is a rather broad feature, but that might require an equivalency table of some kind. Scandinavian patronyms might be easier to generate automatically than Iberian or Celtic ones. Then there is the British bastard designation "fitz": e.g., FitzRoy = the king's bastard (from the French "fils du roi"), or Fitz; though early on the Normans and Bretons in England seem to have used it without necessarily implying illegitimacy.

I also always thought Fitz stood for bastard. But actually it seems to be just son of. I realised that when I looked at a Stewart genealogy a while back (the Fitzalans whom I already knew as Earls of Arundel, but had never realised that it had started as a true patronimic)...

 

[SolSara]

No, it seems it would be distinct from a dynastic name, but attached to anyone who is the son of someone named Jonas.

What RedRooster81 wrote is true. We have removed a lot of old dynasty names from CK1 who had some sort of patronymics in them, except if the dynasty is named after a grandfather or so. But you may end up with a "Nilsson" or "MacDonald" if your character is a son of Nils or Donald.

 

[Danevang]

What RedRooster81 wrote is true. We have removed a lot of old dynasty names from CK1 who had some sort of patronymics in them, except if the dynasty is named after a grandfather or so. But you may end up with a "Nilsson" or "MacDonald" if your character is a son of Nils or Donald.

This may be a detail, but will the end of these names always be -son, or will they be country specific? Like Swedish names having -sson and Danish -sen, or? As i.e. the Scandinavian languages began to differ from one another, and from Anglo-Saxon, in the CK period, will there be differences in the name endings? Or is that too much work?

EDIT: To put it more clearly; Would the Swedish name be Nilsson, and the Danish one Nilsen (in Danish it's actually Nielsen)?

EDIT 2: And will this also include female surnames like -dottir (and -datter and so on)?

 

[Woody Man]

EDIT 2: And will this also include female surnames like -dottir (and -datter and so on)?

Beat me to it, I'm interested to see if this is in there too..