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Dev Diary #101 - Saints and Ancestors

Hello there! Another week, another Dev Diary!


This week we are going to take a look at the Saints, their potential Pagan counterparts, and how they will work in Holy Fury.


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After the death of a pious Christian character, there is a chance for the Pope/Patriarch/local bishop to decide to beatify them. This is how they’re shown to be truly pious Christians. There will be an announcement sent out to the dynasty as well as the ones in the realm of the character. A beatified character gets a special trait, and a chance to later on be canonized.


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If they do indeed go on to become Saints, another announcement message will be sent out to all Christians of the same faith, as well as their dynasty members. The character in question will be given a special nickname, a miracle will be associated with him/her (this is mostly for flavour) and they will be given a special bloodline. Note, any Christian with a religious head can become canonized, not only Catholics.


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The Saint will have their burial site made public, usually in their capital or another nearby province in the form of a Province Modifier. This gives a permanent benefit for whoever holds the Burial Site, as well as some new flavor events that might happen. Any church holdings in the province will be able to create a small shrine to the local Saint. As well, if any raiders were to drop by the province, they might loot and ruin the burial site for some extra gold and prestige.


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A new icon and menu have been added to the religion screen for Christians, where they can check all the Saints that have been created for their faith throughout the game. We figured it would be a handy way of keeping track of everything.


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For those enjoying pilgrimages and traveling, we have added a new option and event chain to travel to a Saint’s burial site. It will find 4 relevant burial sites of Saints created throughout the game. If there isn’t 4 existing in the game yet, there will be up to 3 placeholders filling those spots. Hopefully it will be an interesting change of pace from the regular pilgrimages.


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If the Catholics are led by a particularly terrible Pope, you might even see the cases of “Impious Saints” as we call them. In the worst case scenarios, this can end up with all of Catholicism embroiled in a massive war, fighting for the piety of the Holy See. The impious Saint in question will get a Bloodline as well, but it doesn’t quite bring as many benefits as most other bloodlines do.


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For those of you who don’t care particularly much about Catholics, or Christians in general, we have added a new Reformation doctrine where one can take on the benefits of Saints into your pagan faith. Instead of caring about such silly things as “Piety”, “Humbleness” or other supposed positive traits, the Venerated Ancestors will be based on things your religion cares about. So if you reform your religion to be a warlike one, one is more likely to become a Venerated Ancestor if you do things that are warlike.


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For those of you preferring to lead religions yourself, you will occasionally be given the choice of people the religion will venerate as a worthy ancestor. The dynasty of the character in question will, of course, be very appreciative of their family member being venerated as an Ancestor.

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For the characters receiving that honor, there is a whole slew of new special bloodlines attached to them, as well some special nicknames.


Hopefully you enjoyed this little peek into the upcoming feature for CK2, and we are excited to hear your thoughts on it. Until next time!
 
This all looks like it will be a nice feature but im concerned there will be bloodline spam or a race to get as many as possible by intermarrying.
 
I really like what you are doing in this DLC, this will be really a nice experience.

However, with each new DD, there is this usage of the bloodline (which is great) but it seems to me that there will be TONS of bloodlines and there is no stopping of those (meaning that a bloodline created in 800, will still be alive (in term of bonuses) in 1300. While some may have been that important, I really believe that after so many years, the bloodline effect should fade away for some.
I was wondering if there could be (maybe handle by rules) a way to have a limit to how many generation can get the bloodline : like after 10 generations, the bloodline has not effects/is removed. Or even better that the further you are from the bloodline creation, the lower the bonuses.

I have to agree with this. Even if they are rare, bloodlines will have an exponential growth and it's only a matter of time until every characther has 3 or 4 bloodines, making them meaningless. I like the countdown idea but it might be too much to keep track of all the bloodlines in every characther, so a simple "after X years the effects are halved" and "after Y years the effects disappear" would be ideal. Maybe you could keep the bloodline as flavour, but not the bonus.
 
Looking forward to it. I guess there's a limit to the canonizing weight you may gain from piety? It would be somewhat wrong if a debauched doge can get himself canonized just by donating crazy amounts of cash to monastic/holy orders.
 
When you put a member of your dynastie in the popes chair will it be more likely that your ancestors will get saints?
 
This is one of those situations where a new dynasty should be formed if the descendant is a Lowborn, with a dynasty named after the Saint.

Would be even less value, for a canonized bishop..... or lowborn unmarried courtier. They don't have descendents and cant produce any as they are already dead.
 
I dunno why you guys are so worried about bloodlines getting too spammy.

No the opposite, actually. The problem is I assume priests will have a good chanse to "fill up" the saint interface. They should be most godly afterall, right? Meaning alot bloodlines will be dead already when created and I assume for each saint proclaimed, next saint might have harder requirement, leading to AI moble lord´s rarely/never beeing canonized.:)

EDIT: Even if we have a Karling bishop Canonized, he won't pass his bloodline on unless he had children before beeing nominated a Bishop. Lekey these children don't stand to inherit any titles.
 
I shall proclaim a saint, the person who reveals us the Holy Fury release date today!
You heard that PDX staff? Imagine how your family would benefit for the ages to come! :D
 
This event about War for the Holy See and possibility to choose sides remembered me about how we need similar thing when it comes to Antipopes.

In the Catholic Church window we should not only be able to create Antipopes but also click which of the existing ones we recognize as a true Pope, with all mechanical consequences coming with that decision (taxes, excomunications etc). In case of antipapal war - supporters of each pretender for the papacy would get an event whether they want to support their pope in the military conflict or not.

Some time ago I had such situation in multiplayer where two allied kings, from the same reasons, decided to oppose Pope in Rome. Sadly both of them had to set up their own antipopes which was kind of immersion breaking.

I would be VERY interested in rolling this picking sides mechanic into the anti-pope sphere of gameplay, I think it would add soooo much value to it
 
No the opposite, actually. The problem is I assume priests will have a good chanse to "fill up" the saint interface. They should be most godly afterall, right? Meaning alot bloodlines will be dead already when created and I assume for each saint proclaimed, next saint might have harder requirement, leading to AI moble lord´s rarely/never beeing canonized.:)

EDIT: Even if we have a Karling bishop Canonized, he won't pass his bloodline on unless he had children before beeing nominated a Bishop. Lekey these children don't stand to inherit any titles.

I recall on a previous page they've said that saintly bloodlines will only be created for playable characters, because of the very reason you mention here, it would just create clutter. So un-landed characters, baron-tier characters and theocracies will not be considered when canonisation takes place.
 
Wow... this DLC is beyond all praise. I do have a question though, not really related to this DD. A lot was changed for the christians and pagans, however will the muslims get something as well? Maybe a rework for jihad? After all they were a big part of crusades.
 
Missed opportunity to call this dev diary "when the saints come marching in", "Saint's Row" or "Saints and Scroungers".
 
Any chance the local peasantry could become a bit TOO devout in their veneration of a saint and decide to revolt against their insufficiently devout lord? Or perhaps create their own heresy that players or their vassals could convert to?
 
I recall on a previous page they've said that saintly bloodlines will only be created for playable characters, because of the very reason you mention here, it would just create clutter. So un-landed characters, baron-tier characters and theocracies will not be considered when canonisation takes place.

Thanks. @Snow Crystal confirmed in msg #17. Thanks!

But it makes no sence the best candidates are filtered this way. Cant they get another path than bloodlines? :) To give these "meaningless" charachters a meaning, with higher requirements. Maybe redicoulus reqs :)
 
No the opposite, actually. The problem is I assume priests will have a good chanse to "fill up" the saint interface. They should be most godly afterall, right? Meaning alot bloodlines will be dead already when created and I assume for each saint proclaimed, next saint might have harder requirement, leading to AI moble lord´s rarely/never beeing canonized.:)

EDIT: Even if we have a Karling bishop Canonized, he won't pass his bloodline on unless he had children before beeing nominated a Bishop. Lekey these children don't stand to inherit any titles.

Priest are not the one with the more piety in the game, it's usually the large realm's leaders.
If you go with the religious orders, you have a great chance of having no sin and get quite a lot of good trait. From your vassals and holy wars, you would get tons of piety.
To see with the result in game but I'm pretty sure, bishop won't be the top group to become saint.

Regarding my fear of too much bloodlines, is not limited to saints but to all categories.
We have the initial "legendary" bloodlines (initial), we have the warrior lodges ("repeatable"), the crusade for Constantinople/Byzantium (once ?), Teutons helpers ("if you are truly pious" - once?), the saints ("repeatable")...
That makes a lot and we might not be finished with them.

I fear that by year 1400, half the leaders have 1 or 2 bloodlines at least while this should be rare and thus loose it's meanning.