Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham - Dev Diary 1 - The College of Cardinals

[Doomdark]

It's finally time to announce the next expansion for Crusader Kings II! You might already know the name: "Sons of Abraham". Some of you were very close in your guesses on what it might be. No, it's not a Zombie DLC! Sons of Abraham focuses on the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The idea was to go back to the roots after all the attention given to the heathens, and to flesh out the religious side of the game for the monotheists; Christians in particular.

First and foremost, we wanted to do more with the Pope; how he gets elected, what powers he has and how you can gain his favor. Thus, we added the Cardinal title and the College of Cardinals. For simplicity's sake, there are only nine cardinals, and the Pope is always elected from among their number. Cardinals, however, are not elected; they are picked by the Pope from among his courtiers and the bishops of Europe. The selection is based on many factors; age, piety, opinion, culture (the Pope really likes Italians!), etc.



So, how exactly do you get your man onto the chair of Saint Peter? Well, the Holy See is not a democracy, so this is not a direct process. First, you need at least one of your bishops to get appointed Cardinal by the Holy Father. Fortunately, you do not have to rely entirely on the character of the bishop himself, you can grease the machinery with a bit of lucre by putting money in the campaign fund (similar to how Doges are elected in Merchant Republics). Of course, it is also possible to carefully groom a candidate for a career in the Catholic church before you even make him a bishop.

When the Pope dies, the cardinals in turn elect his successor. This process cannot be directly influenced by the player, but the cardinals will reason much like the Pope does when he picks new cardinals, so it's better to have old, pious men made cardinals than incompetent wastrels whose election you paid for.



Ok, so let us say one of your bishops is eventually made Pope. How does that serve you? Well, Popes that come from your realm will like you - a lot. Of course, that means they will be likely to grant your requests. Want to get divorced? No problem. Want to invade someone? Ok. To make this even more useful, we've given the Pope some new powers as well: he can give you money, plain and simple. He can also approve your candidate for a bishopric under Papal Investiture, or even declare a Crusade on the infidel of your choice. However, each time he does you a favor, he will like you less, so your influence will not last forever. Incidentally, having your antipope installed in Rome will have a similar effect. Oh, and if the Pope should happen to be of your very own dynasty, that will give you a lot of monthly Piety and Prestige.



There are some direct benefits to controlling cardinals as well. You cannot ask to have someone excommunicated or invaded if they control more cardinals than you do.

That's that about the College of Cardinals. Next week I'll talk about holy orders, heresies, and other things...

ps.

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham (official product page)
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii-sons-of-abraham

Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham announced (News article at PC gamer)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/[URL="http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/22/crusader-kings-ii-the-something-something-announced/"][/URL]

 

[Groogy]

There's been a lot of questions about mod-friendliness of the College of Cardinals. Yes the whole new feature will be exposed to the scripts. The College of Cardinals isn't in particular tied to the Catholic faith or hard coded in any way but it is a new kind of title added into the game called Religious Title which works pretty much like Minor title, but instead of being a liege who hands it out to his courtiers it is the religious head with the power to hand it to whoever fulfills the Allow trigger in the script. So if you want you could let kings and emperors receive a religious title called Defender of the Faith if you so desire. The whole election system is enabled by a little flag in the title called can_elect_head so it isn't required to have that in the title but without it, it is more or less just a minor title with little effect. Also only one religious title per religion can have the election system.

Hope that should be enough for the ones that has been asking about scripting and the new DLC

 

[Groogy]

I'm asking myself if the College of Cardinals could be reused to model HRE electors... the elected guys have to be a Religious Head or could be a Secular Ruler? Someone could argue that the Holy Roman Emperor was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church in some way...

The electors(cardinals) don't need to be religious rulers, bishops, pope, etc. But the elected head will always become the religious head.

The are forced to be 9 or it could be changed via defines?

Look at how minor titles work. They will work exactly the same as minor titles in every other regard.

It is not clear to me how this mechanic works with Anti Popes one could have a "fake" College of Cardinals?

No

 

[Groogy]

Please let this mean we can now play Theocracies!!!

No

 

[Groogy]

So, could we potentially mod this into a Roman senate?

It seems consequential that they "elect" the Emperor but in this way they would create not a ruler, but a Religious head, well the Emperor of Pagan Rome was the head of the Roman Religion!

Well yes this would indeed be possible if you would have a separate religion for the roman state, for instance Hellenic. You could have the senate elect the Emperor by making the title similar to how Fylkir works. Also the electors don't need to be of the same religion(so a dummy religion would work I guess if you really want to exploit this for HRE, but then the emperor wouldn't be catholic himself), that a cardinal needs to be catholic is scripted in the allow trigger. We could have hard-coded in that they needed but I felt this would give you guys some more freedom

 

[Groogy]

However could you delete the "if" that force the elected guy to be a Priest?

There is no such if, the only thing is that he becomes the religious head of the religion when elected and the electorate title(Cardinal) is handed out by the Religious Head(Pope). Those are the only limitations. The rest is in the scripts.

 

[Groogy]

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